Christian Nationalism, National Conservatism and Southern Populism. Eh?

Nearly the Southern Populist anthem, Sweet Home Alabama.

I should start off with a massive series of disclaimers here, particularly as Southern Populism and Southern Agrarianism are not the same thing, although they are related.  The terms are easy to confuse.

But confusion is at the core of what we're trying to explore here.

Additionally, Southerners tend to be proud of the South in a way that not all regions of the country are proud of their regions.  Native Westerners tend to be very nativist and provincial, and proud of the West, or more often of their particular states.  Southerners tend to be proud of the entire South, with Texas and Oklahoma, at least by my observation, particularly proud of their states.  Louisiana, which has its own unique culture, does as well.  While I put Lynrd Skynrd up above, for a reason, I'd note that perhaps, in this regard, I should have posted the lyrics by Ally Venable to the song she co performed with Buddy Guy, Texas Louisiana:

Texas

Louisiana whew

That's where we come from

Texas

Yeah Louisiana

Always on the run

Well I'm just starting out

I ain't never done

Hey there neighbor

Get on in this house

Like sugarcane and cactus

We're both from the south

Texas

Louisiana

That's where we come from

Texas

Yeah Louisiana

We're both old and young

I'm the farmers daughter

I'm a poor man's son

Love Stevie ray

Little Walter too

Turn it up Buddy

I wanna jam with you

Texas

Louisiana too

That's where we come from

Texas

Whew Louisiana too

Together having fun

Teacher used to tell me

Two heads is better than one

So, I'm not trying to pick on the South, or Southerners.

Recently we've written two posts, both of which related to Susan Stubson's op ed in the New York Times decrying what she thinks is the impact of Christian Nationalism on the Wyoming GOP.  Those articles were:

Blog Mirror: Christian nationalism and how it’s hurting Wyoming

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

Here's the thing, however.  She's confused.

What Stubson's actually writing about, but doesn't know it, is the impact of Southern Populism on Wyoming, including Southern Cultural Christianity, not Christian Nationalism.  Christian Nationalism hasn't really made an appearance in Wyoming and frankly, while it's been floating around in nascent form in the US since Dreher wrote The Benedict Option, it hasn't gathered a strong street level attraction anywhere.  It's more of an intellectual movement.

Given that the overall terms here are poorly defined, particularly in regard to Christian Nationalism, it's easy to see why the authors of these articles are confused.  It's all the easier to see why Stubson would be confused, as she's a Reagan Republican and a fallen away Catholic who fell into Evangelical Protestantism.  There's a straight line between Ronald Reagan and Southern Populism's spread into the GOP at large, and therefore, even though I'm sure he would be personally horrified, there's a straight line between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.  One, basically, begat the other.

Christian Nationalism, like it or hate it, is an intellectual movement, and is one in the same with National Conservatism.  Its founder in American politics, if not its overall founder, is Patrick Deneen and its backers can be found in the pages of R. R. Reno's First Things.  Quite frankly, that puts it in the intellectual heavyweight category.  It's issued a manifesto, and the signers of it include some well known conservative thinkers.  Deneen has issued at least two well regarded books on the topic. Its central thesis is that liberalism has failed, in part due to its success, and is now consuming itself, and the entire culture of the West with it, by a frenzied orgy of libertine, mostly sexually focused, individualism.  What needs to be done, it holds, is the preservation of democracy, but Illiberal Democracy, with the boundary lines of the culture externally enforced.  It sets its manifesto out as follows:

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-taking 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.

That's not what the leaders of the Wyoming GOP hold dear to their hearts, although they'd likely say they're for all of that.

Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325) holding the Niceean Creed, something that has more to do with Christian Nationalism than anything coming out of the populst wing of the GOP.

And, again, like it or not, Christian Nationalism looks more to Antioch of the 1st Century, and then to Rome, and Constantinople.  Its founders, the way it views itself, would be, it imagines, are found there, not in Philadelphia in 1776, or in Richmond from 1860 to 1865.

They wouldn't be getting down to Sweet Home Alabama or Texas Louisiana.

Southern Populism, however, grows out of the same soil that Southern Agrarianism did, coming up from part of the same culture.  A person might be tempted, therefore, to look to I'll Take My Stand as its manifesto, and they'd be partially correct in doing so, but not fully so.  The authors of that agrarian manifesto were correct in noting that the South had an Agrarian culture, and a Christian one.  Many American agrarians have thought, with some justification, that one must be the other, although oddly it's rarely noted that one of the most successful North American agrarian cultures was just that, but not Protestant.  The Quebec culture prior to the Quiet Revolution was agrarian, and Catholic.  For that matter, the Red River Rebellion was an uprising of Catholic agrarian Métis against the intrusion of Protestant English culture in the form of the English cultured Canadian government.  

Councillors and officers of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, circa 1869. Front row, L-R: Robert O'Lone, Paul Proulx. Centre row, L-R: Pierre Poitras, John Bruce, Louis Riel, John O'Donoghue, François Dauphinais. Back row, L-R: Bonnet Tromage, Pierre de Lorme, Thomas Bunn, Xavier Page, Baptiste Beauchemin, Baptiste Tournond, 

Therefore, the point raised by the Southern Agrarians isn't incorrect, but misunderstood, perhaps even by themselves.

Christianity in the American South was heavily impacted by the Civil War.  Going into the war, the Episcopal Church was the central Christian denomination of the South, even contributing a Bishop to the ranks of Confederate generals.  Behind it was the Presbyterian Church, the church of displaced Scots from Ireland.  Always present in the South, however, and to a smaller degree in the North, were numerous informal Christian pastors and pastors and congregations descendant from earlier dissenters. 

Confederate Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana and founder of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America.  Popular with his troops, he was such a bad general that one historian has noted that the shot that killed him in battle was one of the worst shots of the Civil War, as it removed him from leadership.

 

The war brought these individuals to the forefront in Southern religion.  Episcopalianism was the Church that was associated with the Southern elite and hence failure.  Just as some poorly catechized Catholics have abandoned their church in the wake of priest scandals, average Southerners did so to a large degree following the war.

The rise of certain branches of American Protestantism had occurred before the war, for that matter, which came in the midst of the Great Awakening period.  That period was particularly fertile in the US for the advancement of Protestant faiths that were not rooted in a formal structure, although they created new ones or leaned on informal preexisting ones.  This was not, by any means, confined to the South, but the war did cause a post-war condition in the South in which the Episcopal church wanted and other strains of Protestantism advanced. The Episcopal Church was simply too associated with the disaster of the Civil War and those who had led the South into it.

The war also had the impact of spreading white Southerners across the county.  The Great Migration of black Southerners would wait until the early 20th Century, for the most part, but a large-scale migration of white Southerners started soon after the war, or in reality even during it.  It wasn't massive enough to create the same sort of demographic impacts the Great Migration would, but it did result in the spread of Southerners and Southerners attached to informal strains of Protestantism across the country.  It did not, however, result in a big cultural change.  The religious shift did, however, have a significant cultural impact in the South.

Episcopalianism became northern based following the war and when the Civil Rights Era arrived, it backed it.  Black churches also, and obviously, backed it. But informal cultural Southern Christianity, which had advanced with its very loose structure, in the South after the war opposed it, and often in an unstructured cultural way.   Without the structure of Episcopalianism, or of Presbyterianism, and having adopted certain doctrines that encouraged an anti-Biblical presumption of easy salvation, a certain "do it your own" or individualistic approach, while still very conservative, became the norm such that even people which very loose religious affiliation could feel themselves part of the overall fold and could mix their cultural views with their religious ones easily.

Oil booms of the 50s/60s, 70s, and the very late 20tth Century and early 21st Century had the impact of really bringing up a lot of workers from Texas and Oklahoma during that period, and that in turn really altered the Protestant religious landscape of the oil producing regions of the West at the exact same time that the collapse of the Reformation saw the Mainline Protestant churches in the US became to rapidly contract. The Mainline Protestant Churches had dominated Protestantism outside the South, and in the Rocky Mountain West.  IN the Rocky Mountain West, however, lack of religious attachment was remarkably strong, which impacted how this worked.  Wyoming was, and indeed remains, the least religious state in the U.S., which in turn meant that religion had a very muted impact on politics.  Those who were faithful members of churches were remarkably unwilling to mix faith and politics, and even strongly religious politicians were almost never mention their religious affiliation.  A scene like we recently had, with UW student republicans giving an invocation over a right wing Secretary of State, would simply not have occurred.  Indeed, an effort by a very conservative LDS legislator in the 1980s to regulate pornography was met without right derision.

Whether this is good or bad is, perhaps, dependent upon your religious views, but it was an aspect of life in Wyoming in particular, and in much of the Rocky Mountain West.  It is not as if there were not many churchgoers, there were, but openly incorporating religious beliefs into political positions just didn't occur.

That something was changing should have been obvious, perhaps, by the growth of local mega churches, even in this region.  Prior to the 1990s, loosely defined Protestants tended to gravitate towards an established church, often a Baptist Church, which had loose affiliations, or oddly enough, if they attended church once or twice a year, a Catholic Church.  But with mega churches that muted their denominational affiliation or which claimed none (something that is in fact never really true), they started to gravitate in that direction.  This became obvious first with funerals, oddly enough, which were often held in one of these churches for people who had no real religious affiliation other than a loose or even informal Christianity.  It became a little easy to tell who these people were simply by reading in their obituaries where the funerals would be. 

At the same time, however, this new strain, or rather newly imported strain, of Christianity did very much take root.  People who would have previously gone to a Baptist or Presbyterian Church started attending these, with the latter two suffering as a result.  A partial example of this is here:

City Park Church, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This is City Park Church, and was formerly, as noted below in the original entry, the First Presbyterian Church.

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park. 

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

This century old church became the home of the former First Baptist Church congregation on February 28, 2020, and as noted in a thread we'll link in below, had been experiencing a lot of changes prior to that.

The original entry here was one of the very first on this blog and dated at least back as far as January 25, 2011.  While the architecture hasn't changed at all, with the recent change our original entry became misleading to an extent.

That this had crossed over into politics became obvious with the candidacy of Foster Freiss. Extremely wealthy, and with little connection to Wyoming other than maintaining a home in Jackson, the Wisconsin born Freiss had connections with Texas, and campaigned in a style that recalled the South of the 1970s.  Daisy Duke, t-shirt clad, young women appeared, freezing, in campaign rallies for the first time in the state's history, and so far the only time.  A car that appeared in town, with Colorado license plates declaring "Christians for Freiss" made it obvious what was occurring.

And that's where the state's GOP went.

Not that it's done so cleanly.  A person who knows the state's demographics would note that in certain regions of the state, another religion has a strong representation in the GOP.  Some newly imported members of "Freedom Caucus" are likely members of Mainline or Apostolic Churches, with one probably being Catholic.  Chuck Gray is Catholic.  To an extent, this shows how lines blur along religious and political lines, and it's always difficult to draw bright lines.  To another extent, however, it might also show had American Catholicism has become Protestantized at the pew level with some people.¹

This isn't Christian Nationalism.

Christian Nationalism looks very much outwards, rather than inward, in its view, and if the Christianity of Wyoming's GOP, and that of the nation writ large right now, looks towards South Carolina in 1865 without realizing it, Christian Nationalism looks toward Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, and to some extent, Moscow via Kyiv in 988.

Large revival meeting, 1909, in a National Guard Armory

Put another way, the Christianity of the current GOP really looks towards a rural Southern Christian revival meeting, or at least a revival meeting, of the 1950s, while Christian Nationalism looks either to the WASP past prior to 1950, or to an Apostolic Christian ghetto of the same period.

They aren't the same at all.

Which is why Stubson's commentary was off.

The intellectual heavyweights of the Christian Nationalist movement show that.  Rod Dreher was perhaps there early, and he's a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian, having converted from Catholicism, which he had converted to from Protestantism.  Patrick Dineen is a Latin Rite Catholic.  R. R. Reno is a  Catholic convert from Episcopalianism.  You can find non-Apostolic Christians in the movement, but you have to hunt for them.

Moreover, for nationalist, they're surprisingly international.  Dreher has self exiled himself to Hungary, which many in his camp look towards as a model.²   Poland is held up as an example as well.  Christian Nationalist heralded the election of Giorgia Meloni, who claims to defend "God, fatherland, and family and defines herself as “a woman, a mother, an Italian and Christian”.  Meloni, of course, comes from a Catholic country, Italy, and while her actual adherence to the Faith would seem to be questionable, whatever brand of Christian she is, she's likely culturally Catholic.

What the essential essence of Christian Nationalism holds is that the West, by which it means countries in Europe, made up of European descended people, or countries which have a European culture by whatever means, are essentially (Apostolic) Christian in culture, above everything else. Next to that, each nation, they'd hold, has its own individual culture.  After that, but only after all of that is accepted, they're for democracy.

Hence, they are National Conservatives, or Illiberal Democrats.  Their attachment to democracy comes after 1) an attachment to (Apostolic) Christianity and 2) national culture (formed by an attachment to Christianity), but it is there.

That's distinctly different from modern Populism, which doesn't seem to have a strong real attachment to democracy right now, or to the extent that it does, it's exclusionary.³   Democracy is for the right people, who are of the right culture, and who espouse the American Civil Religion.

Put in terms stated by Dinneen:

As Montesquieu pointed out long ago, democracy is the most demanding regime, given its demands for civic virtue. The cultivation of virtue requires the thick presence of virtue-forming and virtue-supporting institutions, but these are precisely the institutions and practices that liberalism aims to hollow and eviscerate in the name of individual liberty.

Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed.  

National Conservatives would seek the thick preservation of virtue forming and virtue supporting institutions.  Liberals would rip them down.  Populists, right now, would simply dictate their views, expecting them to be accepted.  As Dinneen notes, and correctly, about Liberalism, and by extension the opposite views of National Conservatives/Christian Nationalists:

[W]hat is bemoaned by the right is due not to the left but to the consequences of its own deepest commitments, especially to liberal economics. And it seeks to show that what is bemoaned by the left is due not to the right but to the consequences of its own deepest commitments, especially to the dissolution of social norms, particularly those regarding sexual behavior and identity. The “wedding” between global corporations and this sexual agenda is one of the most revealing yet widely ignored manifestations of this deeper synergy.

Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed

That's also why, quite frankly, these two movements, while they are overlapping right now, are in actuality deeply antithetical to each other, and it's also why, ironically, the very thing that Stubson misidentifies and fears grew out of and is part of the thing that she claims to wish to preserve.

Because National Conservatism/Christian Nationalism is, at the end of the day, rooted in the same concern that caused Dreher to write The Benedict Option, it looks at something much larger than the nation.  The nation that National Conservatism/Christian Nationalism seeks to preserve, overall, is Christendom, with various nations just subparts of that.  Christian Nationalism, or once again National Conservatism, look at nations the same way that Carolingians did.  Yes, there are countries, and yes they do matter, but not as much as something else does.  Southern Populist, however, are America Firsters.

Autograph of Charles the Great.

Put another way, Christian Nationalist feel that the Council of Nicea is of paramount importance, but would reject the concept that the U.S. Constitution is some sort of religious document.  They aren't "Constitutional Conservatives", confident that this somehow equates with religiosity, but rather Council Conservatives confident of their religious grounding.

If that's understood, there really aren't any Christian Nationalist in Wyoming politics, openly.  There may be, without their realizing it, but they aren't the same group as the Freedom Caucus.  The Wyoming Freedom Caucus is made up of populist strongly influenced by Southern Populism, which is where their religiosity comes from.  It's why they can speak in religious terms with such confidence and also support somebody who is a serial polygamist and have a leader who has been accused of serious moral misconduct at some point in the past.  The movement can, at its core, believe that its members were once saved and therefore always saved, and battle with certainty, whereas Christian Nationalist worry about the entire West losing its soul.

All of this undoubtedly sounds like an endorsement of Christian Nationalism, but it isn't.  It is a condemnation of current American populism.  And we are expressing some sympathy with Christian Nationalism in its recognition of what Patrick Dineen has written in regard to liberalism and how it is destroying Western culture, which it is.  Liberalism has succeeded so well, it's now consuming itself by consuming reality.  

Its warning would be simple, recalling its oldest lessons: at the end of the path of liberation lies enslavement. Such liberation from all obstacles is finally illusory, for two simple reasons: human appetite is insatiable and the world is limited. For both of these reasons, we cannot be truly free in the modern sense. We can never attain satiation, and will be eternally driven by our desires rather than satisfied by their attainment. And in our pursuit of the satisfaction of our limitless desires, we will very quickly exhaust the planet.

Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed.

So if this isn't an endorsement of National Conservatism or Christian Nationalism, why?

Well, because prior experience shows that mixing politics with religion, officially, can have unintended results.  It fails, I suppose, to take heed of the council given in the letter to Diognetus, it not immediately, sooner or later.

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.  

That last line is particularly distinctive, "As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution.  Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself."  

A lot in the Populist right, like those practicing American Civil Religion itself, have excused themselves from an awful lot.  Apostolic Christians really can't.

And if the West's needs to be rescued from liberal excess, National Conservatism/Christian Nationalism needs to be careful.  For one thing, it would need to be serious about this item in its manifesto:

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-taking by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed. 

That gets directly to this:

[W]hat is bemoaned by the right is due not to the left but to the consequences of its own deepest commitments, especially to liberal economics. And it seeks to show that what is bemoaned by the left is due not to the right but to the consequences of its own deepest commitments, especially to the dissolution of social norms, particularly those regarding sexual behavior and identity. The “wedding” between global corporations and this sexual agenda is one of the most revealing yet widely ignored manifestations of this deeper synergy.

Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed.

That will be a tall order for conservatives who have held for decades that free enterprise equals corporate capitalism, and still do.  Right wing populists basically, and contrary to their tradition, hold the same thing.

Moreover, National Conservatives will have to be careful not to so blend their faith with their politics that the politics takes over and damages the faith. Ultimately, that's the lesson, maybe, of Quebec. Ireland, and Spain, all of which have been down a type of this road before.  It might well prove to be the lesson of contemporary Russia as well.

Charles DeGualle was a devout Catholic, but he did not attempt to force France into being a religious state.  Éamon de Valera basically did.  Now, having said that, in spite of the news regarding Ireland, Ireland is still a very devout Catholic state, so it can be argued that De Valera was right.  In both instances, democratic systems were preserved, which meant that the state's allegiances could be changed.  It's notable that they have survived that with a retained, if bruised, conservatism that might not otherwise be there.  Of course, once again, you can argue that about Spain.

Deneen seems less keen about preserving democracy, and that a danger here.

Elections provide the appearance of self-governance but mainly function to satiate any residual civic impulse before we return to our lives as employees and consumers.

Patrick J. Deneen.  That suggests a willingness to disregard democracy as being unreal.  History has shown, however, that to be incorrect.

Moreover, a close association with the state can be damaging to the very values that are sought to be protected.  Quebec's religious conservatism suffered heavily when the Quite Revolution came about, in no small part because the guardians of that tradition turned out not to be as loyal to it as thought.

And, finally, we have to recall that in some quarters, namely the US, and perhaps to a lesser extent Canada, well. . . in other places too, a close association with the state by Apostolic Christians can be corrosive.  In the end, Protestants don't really like us, and in the end, we have to make compromises with the state if we're really intending to govern from the pews, so to speak.

So does this mean that the Christian Nationalist have no point, and all is folly?  We must descend into Gomorrah unimpeded?

No.  But there are dangers here.  And probably the first thing we need to do is to be simply clear about our values in a secular society, and even in the pews, where there are also plenty who are willing to compromise Christianity.

These are, any way you look at it perilous times.

Footnotes

1. Javing said that, at the pew level, and influenced by the net making things more available now than at any time in the world's history, the direction is toward 1) orthodoxy or 2) Catholic traditionalism.  The 

2. Viktor Orbán is a member of the Protestant Hungarian Reformed Church, which might be compared to Presbyterianism, but his wife is Catholic and their children were raised as Catholic.  Katalin Novak is also a member of the same church. Hungary has a surprisingly diverse religious make up, with the Catholic claiming(37.2% of the population, Calvinist 11.6% , Lutheran's 2.2%, Eastern Catholic's 1.8%.  18.2% claim no religion and 27.2% simply won't respond to a question on the matter.

3.  Many hardcore right wing populist assert right now that elections that have not gone their way were stolen, which they were not.  However, just below the surface on some of this rhetoric is the suggestion that those who vote the other way are illigitimate voters.  Illiberal Democrats would seek to stifle "progressive" views anti democratically, but right wing populists take a more frightening position that those who hold the opposite views don't count at all.

Wednesday, June 23, 1943. Arrests in France, Elections in Ireland.

The "Prosper" network of SOE agents in France, including French woman Andrée Borrel, Francis Suttill, and Gilbert were arrested by the Gestapo after being betrayed by an informer.

Borrel.

 

They'd be executed on July 6, 1944.  Execution would have been legal under the norms of war of the day, as they were spies, but the method was bizarre in that they were rendered unconscious through injection and then burned alive.

As previously noted, the SOE, which frankly was quite amateurish in Europe, had been penetrated by the Germans.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1943: President Roosevelt establishes American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (“Monuments Men”).

She also notes that the coal strike in Appalachia was settled, but that President Roosevelt threatened to conscript the miners if it occurred again. 

In Ireland's general election t Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera, failed to gain a majority but was able to form a minority government.

Saturday, June 21, 1923. Somewhere West of Laramie and somewhere near Hutchinson, Kansas.

Earlier this week, we noted this:

Thursday, June 21, 1923. Dawn of the advertising age. Somewhere West Of Laramie.

The modern advertising age dawned on this day in 1921 with an ad for the Jordan Playboy automobile:

Today In Wyoming's History: June 21: 1923   This advertisement first ran in the Saturday Evening Post:

The advertisement is the most famous car ad of all time, and the ad itself revolutionized advertising.  Based on the recollection of the Jordan Motor Car Company's founder in seeing a striking mounted girl outside of Laramie, while he was traveling by train, the advertisement is all image, revealing next to nothing about the actual product.  While the Jordan Motor Car Company did not survive the Great Depression, the revolution in advertising was permanent.

Anyway you look at it, it's still a great ad.

This, by the way, is the print date.  The actual issue of the magazine would be a few days later.

On this date, the advertisement actually ran.  I've always thought that it ran in the form set out above, but there were multiple versions, and it would appear that in actuality, the version below is the one that ran.

It's similiar.

But I like the one set out at the very top better.

Sculptor Guzon Borglum began carving the Stone Mountain Memorial bas-relief.  He'd work on the Confederate memorial until 1925, and then abandon the project, blasting his carving of Robert E. Lee off the mountain.  None of his work at Stone Mountain remains.

Harding stopped in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Summer themes were the topic of illustrations on the weekly magazines.

The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Laramie Regional Airport Digs Out Fr...

The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Laramie Regional Airport Digs Out Fr...:   

Blog Mirror: Laramie Regional Airport Digs Out From ‘Unbelievable’ 45 FAA Violations

Laramie Regional Airport Digs Out From ‘Unbelievable’ 45 FAA Violations

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLV. Vulgar

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Hageman Says She Would Vote To Impeach Biden

So Harriet Hageman has stated that she'd join Insurrection Barbie in a move that brings the nation's perilous attachment to democracy four or five steps closer to the brink.

The sad thing is that Hageman, whom I'm sure when she was younger probably would have found this abhorrent, probably means it now.

What on earth happened?

Make no mistake.  Save for the last time it was attempted, every act to actually impeach a US President has been, frankly, stupid and ill-advised. This would be the stupidest.

People advancing such causes will regret it.  The lucky ones will regret it in this World. The unlucky ones in the next, when they cannot atone for it here.  But account for this we all will, including those who are in the stands watching the circus consume itself with horror.

Vulgar.

Missing Titanic sub crew killed after 'catastrophic implosion'

This is a tragedy.  May God rest their souls and may the perpetual light shine upon them.

There's something really wrong with diving on what is, after all, a massive grave.  Now the wreckage of this submarine befouls the grave.

I've been to plenty of locations where the dead lay, including battlefields. But there's something about this that is simply intrusive beyond all measure.

It really ought to stop.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLIV. We pay these people. . . why?

Blog Mirror: First National Presidential Radio Address: 1923

 

First National Presidential Radio Address: 1923

The Work Truck Blog: 1930s? International

The Work Truck Blog: 1930s? International:  

1930s? International

 

I saw this parked on the street the other day, with a for sale sign in the window.  I didn't stop, so I don't know the year for the truck.

International manufactured pickup trucks from 1907 to 1975.

At what point do we admit things aren't quite right?

It's June 22, by which time we're usually getting warm weather.  Indeed, usually it's really warm by this time of the year.

Instead, we're getting gigantic amounts of rain. When I checked yesterday, where I am, had 250 times the normal amount of rain for the month,

250 times.

This isn't normal.

Everyone is observing that its weird, and people are tired of it.

It is very weird.

It's getting hard to pretend that the climate isn't at least a little out of wack.  This is not only not normal, it's beyond not normal.  The entire spring has been very cold, and the snowfall went on forever, with an April snowstorm bringing the heaviest snow accumulation in Natrona County's history.

In spite of that, at least one of our Congressional delegation routinely berates President Biden's "radical climate agenda".

Nature, agriculture, and even simple living conditions can just stuff it, I guess.

Facts are a sticky thing.  You really don't get to pretend that your economic interest determine science.  Nor, as a politician, do you get to pretend that your voter's economic interest determine science.

But that's pretty much what we're doing.

When I was a geology student, we were taught that if the temperature of the Earth increased, only a small amount, it would result in a much wetter climate.  Indeed, back then, the common thought about global warming, in academic circles, is that only a marginally hotter climate resulted in a dramatic increase in precipitation, which in turn would trigger an ice age. The onset of the ice age, it might be noted, was rapid, which at the same time wouldn't mean that you'd have glaciers everywhere overnight.

I'm not saying that this is what we're currently enduring, but something odd is going on, and we really need to pay attention to it.

Let's be honest.  The 500,000 citizens of Wyoming don't control the major shifts in energy consumption and generation that are occurring now. That's why the State government is so excited about the Trans West Transmission Project.  That's why the state is permitting solar, wind and nuclear power generation facilities.  They know what is coming in terms of consumption.

That's also why the state government, which is much less beholden to the populist right than our members of Congress, really don't say much about what is occurring in this arena.

People have a moral and ethical duty to be honest. It's time to be honest to the residents of the State.  We want to keep our natural environment and our agricultural base. Sure, we'd like the petroleum and coal industries to go on forever, but that doesn't mean we have a right to blind our eyes to science because we wish things weren't the way they are, or pretend that the drive away from fossil fuels, which is going on, isn't happening.

Petroleum in particular is not going away overnight.  Senator Joe Manchin, from a coal producing state, is much more realistic on this, in spite of the constant criticism that he endures on the topic, that our local Congressional delegation is willing to be.  When Manchin speaks of fossil fuel production, it's clear he sees it as a bridge to a new energy regime, and that makes sense.  It would also make sense to invest, and those industries probably are, in ways to attempt wholesale carbon recapture.

We also have to realize, however, that most people enduring a soggy summer or blistering heat don't work in the energy sector and politicians from a minority party going on television claiming something is "radical" don't convince them to do diddly.  Indeed, because that's not how that works, thinking people should realize that's solely for a certain minority audience.  Being party of a minority audience is fine, but in this day and age, we're so balkanized that we weirdly believe that our own subset reflects the majority, even when it clearly does not.

This is really demonstrated, I'd note, by the Trumpist right, right now.  They're totally convinced that a majority of Americans support Trump, when in reality Trump is in a minority party that's lost election after election, doesn't receive the popular vote for the Oval Office, and is declining in membership. Trump might win the nomination but that's in no small part because everyone else has left or is leaving.  The GOP is now like a neighborhood party in which the oddball family from down the block showed up late, and then demanded that everyone listen to their Eight Track Tape collection of trucker songs.  They can convince themselves that everyone loves them when they finally are played, but that's because everyone else went home, or more likely down the street to a competing party.

We don't get to pretend that elections were stolen that weren't, but we've been doing a fair amount of that around these parts as well.

Rudyard Kipling. Epitaths of the Great War. The Wonder

the wonder 

Body and Spirit I surrendered whole 

To harsh Instructors—and received a soul . . . 

If mortal man could change me through and through 

From all I was—what may The God not do?

Tuesday, June 22, 1943. Race Riots in Detroit, Cruxhaven bombed,

Today in World War II History—June 22, 1943: In Detroit race riot, 24 Blacks & 9 whites are killed, 800 wounded (75% of the wounded are Black), 1800 arrested (80% Black); governor requests federal troops.

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

It's worth recalling that the Detroit riots came hard on the heels of the Zoot Suit Riots.  The US was obviously not doing well with race relations in the heat of the war, or perhaps more properly the heated economy, mass movement of people, and the induction of huge numbers of men into the service were bringing the nation's race problems to a head.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Cuxhaven, the second heaviest raid of the war to date by the US, losing 16 aircraft. This compared favorably to the June 11, raid, in which it had lost 85.

A large exhibit of captured German equipment was held in Gorky Park.

Friday, June 22, 1923. Harding in Kansas City.

Harding's tour of the country stopped in Kansas City, where he delivered this speech:

My Countrymen:

Stopping as I am, en route across the continent, to make an official visit of inquiry to the vast territory of Alaska, I stand before you to offer greetings, and bring, if possible, the federal Government a little closer to you and the people of the United States closer to their Government. I confess it has been something of a problem to select subjects for localities, and take cognizance of the territorial interest in the spoken word, and at the same time keep in mind that the printed speech, in the days of modem publicity, is available to all America. I do not mean that there are any circumstances under which the President would say a thing in Kansas City that he could not say in New York, New Orleans, or San Francisco, because our varied national interests are wholly mutual in their last analysis.

Ours is a common country, with a common purpose and common pride and common confidence. I am thinking rather of the enlarged audiences with the marvels of the radio. I was speaking to you last night in St. Louis, precisely as I am speaking to Denver, Chicago, and elsewhere to-night. We have come into very close communication in the United States, and we shall infinitely profit if it brings us into closer and fuller understanding. I know of nothing which will so promote our tranquility and stability at home and peace throughout the world as simple and revealing and appealing understanding.

Production is the very lifeblood of material existence and commerce is its vitalizing force. Put an end to commerce and there will be no cities, and farm life will revert to the mere struggle for subsistence. And there can be no commerce without transportation. In all the exchanges which make for commercial life, transportation is as essential as production.

Not long ago, while discussing the distressing slump in agricultural prices which threatened the very existence of farm industry, a caller drew from his pocket an old Ohio publication, a weekly newspaper of the early forties of the last century, and turned to the quotations on live stock, dairy, and farm products. Wheat was 40 cents the bushel, pork 3 cents the pound, butter 5 cents the pound, .potatoes 8 cents the bushel. Not many automobiles in returns like those. But that was before the age of motor cars, that was in the flatboat era, when a cargo of farm products had to be floated down the Scioto and Ohio Rivers 250 miles to market. The prices were a reflex of the crudity of transportation. And manufactured products were correspondingly high to the consumer, because there was the same crudity of transportation in distribution. The stage coach, the wagon train, and the flatboat were speed wonders of that day, and the canalboat was the last word in luxury on many waters. The great Missouri Valley was then unrevealed, and only awakening transportation was the revealing agency. In the infinite bounty of the Creator the measureless riches of the West were bestowed, but they availed little until the whistle of the steam locomotive proclaimed its westward march with the Star of Empire.

It is a curious trait of human nature that we acclaimed railroads in the building and then turned to hamper them in the operation. Missouri and Kansas were doubtless like Ohio. We gave from our purses to contribute to needed building funds, we donated vast areas for right of way, we witnessed financial exploitation with little protest, because of our eagerness to acquire, and acclaimed the acquisition. Marvelous development attended, but we omitted the precautions which would have avoided many present-day difficulties.

Everybody knows how necessary transportation is in this modem world of specialized industries and extensive exchanges. Everybody knows that our very social scheme, as now organized, is dependent on the maintenance of adequate transportation media. A good many people, indeed, have latterly come to wonder if it might not be possible even that we have committed our welfare and prosperity too largely to the assumption that it would always be possible to provide all the transportation that the community might desire, at costs which would not be prohibitive. That we have even staked our very existence on the daily continuity of transportation. There is a new, and I think increasing, school of thought on this subject. Its adherents are beginning to ask whether, in the long run, it would not be better to attempt making local communities more nearly self-dependent, by diversifying their range of production, and thus reducing the amount of transportation and exchange of products over long distances. But such a course would be a reversion to the old order, which no modem community willingly would accept, back to the farm self-contained, back to the restricted community, with its candle burning beneath the half-bushel measure.

Of one thing we may be reasonably assured, and that is that since railroads first began to be built in the world there never was a time when so many people, in so many communities, were frankly and intelligently questioning the future as regards its instrumentalities of transport. They are asking very frankly and pointedly how they can attain railroads enough in the next few generations to supply them, along with other agencies, with the transportation they will require. I doubt if there is a country in the world in which railroads have come to be a considerable transportation factor which has not some sort of a railroad crisis on its hands right now. There are some countries which merely need more railroads, and are willing to pay almost any price to get them, just as we would have done a generation or two generations ago. There are others which have more railroads than current traffic and insistent demand for lower rates make profitable, so that they have been made in some fashion or other, a burden on either industry or the public treasury. There are still others which have excellent railroad systems but have found, in the increased cost of capital and operation which came with the World War upheaval, that the cost of transportation is threatening to become too heavy for the producing industries to bear it.

Our own country, although it possesses something like forty per cent of the world's railroad mileage, is confronted with all these difficulties. In much of our territory we need more railroad facilities, and somehow will have to supply them in the near future. It is stated on high authority that the indirect losses in industry and commerce due to insufficient transportation run into figures equal to the burdens of federal taxation. On the other hand there are some railroads in this country the building of which would better have been deferred, for they were born out of misguided enthusiasm, or unjustifiable speculation, or the mere purpose of levying a sort of transportation blackmail upon systems already in the field. Finally, we have many railroads which, though apparently well managed and absolutely necessary to the communities they serve, are finding it difficult to earn a living and quite impossible to provide the necessary maintenance and the means of expanded facilities.

Every passing year adds to the cost of producing new railroads. Most of our railroads were begun in a time when land was the most plentiful and least valuable thing we possessed, and their rights of way and terminals cost, as compared with the present expense that would be involved in reproducing them, very little indeed. Everybody is doubtless familiar with the story that a few years ago a great engineer was commissioned to make preliminary calculations of the cost of a complete new trunk line system between New York and Chicago. He is said to have reported that the purchase of real estate for terminals on Manhattan Island alone would require as much capital as would the physical construction of the entire line from New York to Chicago.

There could hardly be a better illustration of the increasing difficulties which the country must face in any considerable expansion of its railroad system. Of course, this hypothetical new trunk line from Lake Michigan to the Atlantic coast was not constructed. If it had been, it could not have earned returns on its enormous cost unless rates had been greatly increased for its benefit. But if rates had been increased for it, they would have had to be increased also for the lines competing with it. Otherwise, the new road would have no business at all. An increase of tariffs which would have permitted such an expensive new property to earn even a moderate return on its investment would have enabled the older and less expensive properties to earn absolutely preposterous returns.

It is worth while to bear in mind, in the face of current agitation, that we could not replace our railroads for a vastly larger sum than the valuation placed upon them by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and it is fortunate for our people that we do not have to contemplate a rate structure founded upon replacement cost.

I have referred to the previously recited instance because it so perfectly illustrates the whole situation which the country must meet in dealing with its railroad problem. Events of the last few years have made us all realize that the railroads must be administered under some policy that will make it possible to find the capital wherewith to expand the existing systems as business shall require, without imposing an impossible burden upon industry and consumption.

It is no theoretical problem. It is not an imaginary thing to be swept aside with the wave of the hand. When the Government undertook operation during the war, and standardized wages, and was caught in the sweeping current of mounting cost, it created a situation to ignore which would quickly develop a national menace. At an awful cost we learned the extravagance and mounting burden of Government operation. Yet there are to-day very insistent advocates of Government ownership. Frankly, I do not share their views. Our political system has not reached a state of development when we can insure proper administration.

I believe it would be a colossal blunder which would destroy initiative, infect us with political corruption, create regional jealousies, and impose incalculable cost on the public treasury. But we must find a solution of the rate problems and the necessary expansion of facilities and find that solution in spite of the prejudices of the present-day sponsors for operations and the present-day destroyers who would bankrupt or confiscate, else Government ownership and operation will become an accepted necessity. Nor do I share the views of those who would lower rates without regard to railroad good fortune. The prosperity of the railways is the prosperity of the American people, and the property rights in railway investment are entitled to every consideration under our Constitution which is due to property rights anywhere. Any tendency toward confiscation will lead to confusion and chaos, and destroy the very foundation on which the republic is builded.

It is easy to understand how many people contemplate the abolition of competitive carrying charges, and the elaborate machinery of Government regulation, and argue that the logical step is to put them all in one common pool under Government ownership. That would effect an adjustment between the fat and the lean, if it didn't make them all lean. It would equalize profits and losses between favored lines and the less fortunate ones, it would abolish profits and saddle all the losses on the public treasury. More, it would completely disarrange the economic relationship between our different communities, upon which our present- day commerce is builded. It is preferable to preserve initiative and enterprise, to maintain the inspiring competition of service, and it is vital that the cost of transportation be borne by the commerce which is served.

No, my countrymen, I am not proposing nationalisation, nor a renewed experiment in Government operation, the cost of which we have not yet settled. The federal treasury can not well bear any added burdens until we have lifted many of those already imposed. I had rather solve a difficulty than embrace a danger.

I do believe there is a rational, justifiable step, full of promise toward solution. It will effect a diminution in rates without making a net return impossible. It will make sound finance possible for expansion. I refer to the program of consolidating all the railroads into a smaller number of systems, the whole to be under rigorous Government supervision, and die larger systems to be so constituted that the weaker and unprofitable lines would be able to lean upon the financial strength of the stronger and profitable ones until the growth of the country makes them all earn a just return upon capital invested. The transportation act of 1920, known as the Cummins-Esch law, contemplated this kind of a consolidation, but made it permissive rather than mandatory. In effect, it left to the railroad managements, subject to the master plan set up by the interstate Commerce Commission, to arrange the system groupings of the roads.

That provision was adopted only after long and detailed consideration by men of wisdom and experience, and seemed to represent the best judgment of leaders in both political parties. Its weakness was that it was doubtful whether the railroads would be able, of their own volition, to reconcile all the conflicting interests involved in so enormous a reorganization. It was frankly recognized when the legislation passed that it was necessarily somewhat experimental. Likewise, it was extremely uncertain whether the wisdom of a dozen Solomons, sitting as railroad presidents and chairmen of boards, and as financial backers of these great properties, would be equal to the task of organizing a group of systems which would represent fair treatment of all the interests involved, including those of the public.

There now appears to be no difficulty about any constitutional inhibition to the voluntary consolidation as authorized by Congress. But the problem of reconciling the interests of the hundreds of different ownerships and managements of lines to be merged into systems has proven a task for which no solution has been found.

It is, therefore, being seriously proposed that the next step be to further amplify the provisions for consolidation so as to stimulate the consummation. It is my expectation that legislation to this end will be brought before Congress at the next session. Through its adoption we should take the longest step which is now feasible on the way to a solution of our difficult problems of railroad transportation.

There has been undue alarm in many communities, Kansas City included, concerning the effect of such consolidations upon commercial centers like yours. Let me allay the alarm by reminding you that the whole question is one of adjustment, and the whole program is to be constructive, looking to enhanced service, and destruction is as much to be avoided as failure is to be prevented.

Though no other nation in the world offers a parallel in railway development, those of us who believe that this program of regional consolidation would produce highly beneficial effects find our belief sustained by recent experience in Great Britain. The railroads of that country have in the last few years passed through an experience which, considering the vast differences between the two countries as to area, geographic configuration, industrial and social organization, has more or less paralleled that of American railroads. The United States and Great Britain were, when the World War flamed, the only two great countries which had clung unalterably to private ownership of railroads.

In every other important country a considerable portion or all of the railroad mileage was owned or operated by the government. In Britain, as here, the necessities of war persuaded the Government to take over the roads, place their operation under more rigorous control than before, and extend financial guaranties. In both countries, the results were expensive from the viewpoint of the treasury, and highly unsatisfactory from that of the public's convenience and the accommodation of business. In both countries, again, the experience went far to dispel whatever illusions had been entertained about the desirability of government railroad management.

The parallel does not end here. When the war ended opinion in both countries urged return of the railroads to corporate management as soon as possible. In both this was effected, and—here comes the most striking coincidence of all—in both the return was accompanied by a legislative provision looking to consolidation of the many systems into a small group of great ones. The difference was that in Great Britain the legislation was mandatory, requiring that by January 1, 1923, the roads should be consolidated into four great systems; here it was permissive, and, of course, a much larger number of systems is proposed. The British program has been carried into effect; there are now four systems in the country, all organized around the same general idea of increasing efficiency and providing their financial stability.

While this reorganization has been in effect only a few months, its early results are reported to justify fully the expectation of better conditions under it. It is regarded as a long step toward permanent settlement, on a basis fair to the owners of the properties, and to the public interest in good service at the lowest possible rates.

The necessity for early adoption of this or some other program to place the railroads on a sound basis is so pressing as to make it a matter of deep national concern. There is no other issue of greater importance, for herein lies in large part the solution of the agricultural problem, and with it the assurance of our industrial position. Nothing else can possibly prosper with agriculture depressed; and agriculture is calling loudly for relief from present transportation burdens.

Quite recently Senator Cummins, the veteran chairman of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee, made the startling statement that probably 75,000 miles of our railroads are earning so little and costing so much to operate that with scant incomes they can not be adequately maintained and expanded in facility to meet traffic requirements. If we realize that this means near one-third of the country's railroad mileage, we will appreciate the gravity of the situation. Yet there it is, grimly staring us in the face, challenging our statesmanship and business capacity.

Not long ago the Interstate Commerce Commission actually granted the necessary authorization to tear up and abandon one piece of over two hundred and thirty miles of railroad. It was no frontier line, in an undeveloped, uninhabited section; it was in the rich and populous state of Illinois. If the spectacle of a railroad literally starved to death in such a community is alarming, it is yet less a calamity in some ways than it would be in a region possessing fewer lines capable of taking over the public service. A majority of the people tributary to it will, by going a few miles farther, get transportation from other roads. But there is no such solution of the problem for many extensive communities now served by roads in financial distress.

There are some roads—many of the smaller ones in fact—whose continued operation is absolutely vital to many thousands of people, to considerable towns, to large areas of country, whose revenues simply can not provide financial facilities through earning, pending a considerable growth in community population, say nothing of earning any return whatever on capital invested. No legerdemain of court processes, receivers' certificates, or financial juggling, can save them. They must get more revenue or stronger support or quit operating until the country is more largely developed. We shall contribute nothing to solving their problem by agreeing that they ought not to have been built so soon. Nor shall we help by talking about the wickedness of men who, years ago, exploited the public, watered stocks, and did other reprehensible things. No panacea will be found in statistics proving that some other roads are earning more than they need, unless we find an equitable way to coordinate the activities of the strong roads to develop the weak ones. .

The railways have become publicly sponsored institutions, and government must find a way to avoid confiscation, avoid starvation, and maintain service and a proper return upon capital which will assure them a growth commensurate with the country's development.

We are all agreed that to abandon any important share of railroad mileage is inconceivable. We can not do it because people already dependent on the railroads would be ruined; and because, further, in a not very distant future we should be compelled by the country's development to put them back, or their equivalent in capacity for service. They must be saved. There are just three possible ways to do it:

1. For the Government to take and operate the weak roads, and thus bear all the loss without any of the profits of railroad management.

2. For the Government to take all the railroads, convert them into one gigantic pool, and plunge into the enormous responsibility thus incurred. In the present state of the public treasury and of tax burdens, and in the light of recent sad experience with Government management, this is not to be considered. I believe it would be politically, socially, and economically disastrous.

3. The plan of consolidations already outlined, bringing economies in operation, financial stability, ability to secure needed capital, adjusting rates and regulations to the necessities of the position, and preserving the real advantages of competition in service, while avoiding the evils of Government ownership.

As among these possibilities there can be little doubt of the public preference for the third program. It is not unjust to the strong roads, for the prosperity of these, like the prosperity of all industry, depends on keeping the country as a whole prosperous. Every mile of railroad trackage in the land helps to make business for every other mile. The transportation system must be considered as a unity, precisely as the nation itself must be considered. In this manner we will best help to insure the credit of the railroads, assist them to new capital for future expansion, and insure, for the future, against the sort of wildcat and competitive railroad construction which in the past has been responsible for giving us a great share of the trackage which now proves economically unjustified.

There is another particular reason which urges the early adoption of the larger-system plan. It would be a long step toward solving the problem of keeping the railroad equipment adequate. Many financially weak roads are unable to provide all the rolling stock they need. Inadequacy of car service hindered the relief of the coal situation last winter, it denied the farmer a market when prices were most advantageous, and has impeded manufacturing industry time and again. It is fair to say the railways were helpless because they were financially and otherwise unable to keep up with the demands for service. Prevailing practices further embarrassed the situation. Roads inadequately equipped make up their deficiency by borrowing the cars of other roads. When a foreign car comes to one of these parasite lines it is not returned promptly, but often is deliberately retained. The free movement of cars is prevented; no company can be certain of commanding even its own equipment when it is needed; seasonal congestions or shortages of cars follow; and an unfair burden is imposed on those roads which sincerely try to meet the demands of this demoralized situation.

To meet this condition, the proposal of a nation-wide car pool has lately attracted much attention. The Pullman Company fairly illustrates what is meant. This great corporation provides most of the railroads with certain kinds of cars, on a rental basis. Applying the same idea to the provisions of freight cars, you have a rough notion of the proposed car pool. It is urged by advocates that it would unify the rolling-stock organization; make possible the enlistment of adequate capital to pro-vide for the weak and strong roads alike; place the entire organization under a single centralized control which would insure equity to all roads and sections. There are others who insist it would not correct the present evils, and would divide responsibility and make regulation and supervision more difficult. In any event the system of consolidation would in effect clear up many difficulties in car distribution.

We come now to an entirely different phase of this transportation question. Quite regardless of its cost, the continuity, the assurance of service at all times is absolutely necessary in transportation. Business that is done to-day depends on the certainty that the goods tan be delivered to-morrow. If there is doubt about the trains running and the deliveries being made to-morrow, there will be unwillingness to buy and sell today. All of which brings us to consideration of the relations between the transportation organization and its employees.

There is no other business, so far as I know, in which suspension of operations can produce such disastrous results as in transportation. The vital importance of this service has brought many people to the conclusion that it ought to be possible absolutely to forbid and prevent railroad employees from striking. I do not believe it possible under our form of government to compel men to work against their will, and do not think it desirable under any form of government. I say this, fully recollecting my vote in the Senate in favor of the antistrike provision of the railroad act of 1920. That was not a provision denying men the right to strike. It was merely a requirement that before the men should strike or the employer should lock them out, both sides should submit their differences to a properly constituted and impartial tribunal, empowered to consider the facts, determine the merits, and make an award.

It was believed that in the vast majority of cases this procedure would prevent lockouts and strikes; and, in view of the enormous loss to the carriers, to their employees, and to the public resulting from strikes, I profoundly regret that it should not have been possible to give the plan a fair trial. When I say a fair trial, I mean a trial under conditions fully and frankly acceptable to all interests. I do not believe that in such a situation a fair trial is possible unless both sides have absolute confidence in the fairness of the tribunal and are sincerely willing to accept its verdict. If human wisdom shall ever be capable of setting up such a tribunal as that, and of inspiring both sides of the controversy with complete confidence in it, we will have traveled a long way toward industrial peace.

Personally, I have confidence that the thing is possible. I believe so firmly in the underlying common sense of both organized industry and organized labor, and in the fairness toward both on the part of the great public on which both of them are finally dependent, that I believe at last it will be possible to arrive at settlement of industrial disputes in public services by such a method. Let me say so plainly that there will be no misunderstanding, that in most disputes which end in strikes or lock outs I do not believe the difference which at last divides the two sides very often represents any underlying question of human rights and human justice.

There was an interesting illustration in the strike last year of the railway shopmen. The Government sought to effect a settlement that had for its firm foundation the pledged acceptance by both managers and employees of the decisions of the Railway Labor Board. To such a settlement the spokesmen of managers and employees gave their pledge, but the managers rejected the agreement on the ground that it did not do justice to the new employees who were taken on after the strike began. Much was made of the issue, but in the end all settlements were effected on precisely the terms the Government proposed. Yet the agreement to abide by the Labor Board decision was lost in the days of anxiety and the separate settlements which were effected.

It is inescapable that the Government feels the importance of public interest and right in connection with the settlement of such questions. t The vital existence of the Nation now depends upon continuity of transportation. In recent years it has come to be accepted that there are three parties, rather than two, to every controversy between the employer and employee of a public-service corporation. The employer is one, the employee is another, and the great public, which must have the right to consume and to be served, is the third. If we are quite frank among ourselves we will have to admit that in dealing with such controversies the third party in interest has, down to this time, decidedly received the least consideration. Yet the public is the party on which finally must be placed the burden of whatever adjustment is effected.

As a means of making possible righteous adjustment between railroads and their employees, with due regard for the interest of the public which pays, the Government established a Railroad Labor Board. It was assumed that this organization, required to represent in equal numbers the employers, the employees, and the public, would command the confidence of all sides and that its determinations would be accepted. Unfortunately, for reasons which are the subject of no little controversy, the board has never had the cooperation of employer and employee for which its authors hoped. For myself, I am not convinced that the test has been a complete or entirely fair one, and I favor, not its abandonment, but its continuance under such modifications as seem most likely to make the plan successful. But there is little to hope for until all concerned are ready to comply promptly with the board's decisions. I am frank to say I do not hope for compliance on the part of employees so long as decisions are ignored by the managers.

There is another highly important phase of the transportation problem very much worth our attention. I believe the use of our inland waterways offers the one sure way to reduced carrying charges on basic materials, heavy cargoes, and farm products. Probably all of us acknowledge the urgent need of diminished cost on agricultural shipments and many bulk cargoes essential to manufacturing industry. While it is well established by the Boston Milk Case decision that public necessity justifies carrying a commodity at less than cost, the service at less than cost on the larger tonnage of the country does not offer the righteous solution. We ought to try the experiment of coordinating rail and water shipments, we ought to avail ourselves of the waterways developed through expenditures of enormous public funds, and we ought to give the waterway carriers a chance to prove their capacity for helpful service.

The Federal Government has expended approximately $1,130,610,000 on river and harbor improvement. Only last spring the Congress appropriated $56,589,910, in spite of a budget recommendation of less than half. For the stuns spent on harbors we have most beneficial results. The millions expended on inland waterways, on rivers and canals, have brought small returns because we have put them to no practical use. Though we expended to cheapen carrying charges and to facilitate transportation, we have failed in coordinating service and have allowed the railroads to discourage every worth-while development. Where barge and packet service has been established there has been such an unfair division of the joint carrying charge that waterway development has been impeded, and where service lines by water have been established the hoped-for diminution of rates has been denied or avoided until the plea of cheapened transportation by water has seemed a mockery.

I believe we should encourage our water service, we should encourage and enforce coordinated service, we should see to an equitable division of rates, and exact rate reductions whenever practicable to operate successfully under rate reductions.

It is a very discouraging picture to contemplate the expenditure of $50,000,000 of public funds on an inland waterway when the tonnage on that waterway has diminished more than half, while the waterway itself is made better and better year by year. We have either wasted many hundred of millions in blind folly or have been inexcusably remiss in turning our expenditures to practical account.

I wish the railway leadership of the country could see the need of this employment of our water routes as an essential factor in perfected transportation, and join in aiding the feasible plan of coordinating service and cheapening charges, not alone as a means of popularized and efficient public service, but as a means of ending the peril of their own fortunes.

No thoughtful sentiment in America will tolerate the financial ruin of the railroads. But the people do wish, now that exploitation has been ended, to have their transportation adequate to the country's needs, and desire all our facilities brought into efficient service. They wish to make sure of the ample agencies, and they demand the least carrying charge which will make an adequate return to capital and at the same time permit extensions and additions and enhanced equipment essential to the best transportation in the world.

We have not fully appraised the evolution from the ox-cart to motor age. The automobile and motor-truck have made greater inroads on railway revenues than the electric lines with their intimate appeal to the local community. There will never be a backward step in motor transportation. But we shall do better if we find a plan to coordinate this service with the railways, rather than encourage destructive competition. Indeed, the motor transport already promises relief to our congested terminals through better coordination. We have come to the point where we need all the statecraft in business, to find the way of making transportation in its varied forms adequate to the requirements of American commerce, to afford that transportation its due reward for service, without taking from production and trade a hindering exaction.

I can not too greatly stress the importance of this great problem. It can not be solved by those who commend the policy of confiscation or destruction, nor can it be solved by those who make a prejudiced appeal for political favor. We must frankly recognize the exactions imposed upon the American farmer during the war expansion of rates, take note of the wage development which will yield no reduction in the principal item of operating cost, and seek conditions under which we may have the requisite reductions in fixed charges which will afford encouraging relief. If the system consolidations, with diminished overhead costs, with terminal advantages largely improved and terminal charges greatly reduced, will not afford the solution, then our failure will enforce a costlier experiment and the one great commitment which I hope the United States will forever escape.

We are dwelling now amid a gratifying return to prosperous conditions. I do not share the feeling that the recovery is a mere temporary one, with impending relapse. The guaranty of permanence lies in our doing the things essential to the equitable sharing of our good fortune. There can be no abiding prosperity in industrial centers, in transportation or elsewhere, unless it is properly shared by American agriculture. Government can make no direct bestowal of good fortune, but it is the duty of government to maintain conditions under which equal opportunity for good fortune is the heritage of every American everywhere.

Under our representative democracy we find ourselves absorbed in issues which more or less concern us in our individual affairs, but we lose the aspect of government as a whole and take it as a matter of course. It is our accepted practice rather than a deliberate intent.

Americans ought ever be asking themselves about their concept of the ideal republic. I take it to be one of universal good fortune, where freedom is as complete, under the law, as justice is unfailing within the law. A land where the equality of freedom's opportunity and the reward of merit are held as sacred inheritances and citizens are made fit to embrace beckoning opportunity.

Above all else, since we are the great exemplars of representative democracy, ours should be a land of unquestioned loyalty to the great fundamentals on which we are builded, to which Americans are committed by birth, or declare allegiance when they are adopted. We have achieved most notably in development; let us make sure of the preservation and hold ourselves equipped for the continued triumphs of progress at home and unafraid to play a great people's becoming part in the affairs of the world.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLIV. We pay these people. . . why?

Lauren Boebert introduced a moronic bill to impeach President Biden.

It failed, but only as Speaker of the House, McCarthy was able to strike a deal with Insurrection Barbie to send it for review to the House Judiciary Committee.

Congressman Adam Schiff, who is one of the most irritating members of Congress, was censured along party lines for "misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives" a stunning thing to do in a body that includes Insurrection Barbie and Marjorie "Jewish Space Laser" Taylor Green.  

Seriously?

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Put your nastiness away and have a beer, Steamboat and Red Wing, Repeating history, Dog whistles.

Today In Wyoming's History: Albany County Commissioners vote to change name of lake.

Today In Wyoming's History: Albany County Commissiones vote to change name of ...: 

Albany County Commissiones vote to change name of lake.

The Albany County Commissioners have voted to change the name of Swastika Lake, in the Medicine Bow National Forest, to Samuel H. Knight Lake, after the famous Wyoming geologist.

One county commissioner, interestingly the only Republican one on the board, which shows how different Albany County's politics are compared to the most of the rest of Wyoming, slammed the move as "Communists".  Testimony by others dismissed that proposition, however, and indeed historical evidence showed that Native Americans objected to the use of the word as long ago as the 1940s.

The commissioner action now goes to the Wyoming board that deals with geographical names and, if they approve the change, on to the Federal Government.

Submersibles, Disasters, and Running for the Dog Whistles.

 

Missing Titanic Submersible Is Not The Only At-Sea Crisis We Should Be Talking About Right Now

More than 500 refugees are presumed to have drowned last week off the Greek coast.

From the Huffington Post, which I have little respect for simply because I found Ariana Huffington to be incredibly irritating.

But there's really a point here.

Or is there?

Some have already recast this story this way:

White privilege is corporate media's non-stop coverage of 5 people on $250,000 a person sightseeing submarine to see to Titanic wile ignoring that More than 500 refugees are presumed to have drowned last week off the Greek coast.

White privilege?  Bullshit.

I'm white, and I don't have $250,000 to blow on something like this. 

The entire term "white privilege is a left wing dog whistle.  Go into any big city, and you'll see plenty of stoned street people living in ignored abandonment, most of whom are white. Where is their privilege?

And it's worth noting that the refugees in question are "Syria, Egypt and Palestine" would be émigrés.  Up until some point during the Arab Israeli Wars, at least Syrians and Palestinians could in fact be regarded as "white".  At least this was certainly the case with Syrians, of which the Lebanese were a sub category, again until the ongoing protracted hatreds of Middle Eastern conflict changed that.  I have an entire set of partially Lebanese cousins and a late uncle who was half Irish and half Lebanese, who would have been surprised that everyone else in the extended family was part of some other (made up) racial demographic.

What Syrians, Egyptians and Palestinians largely are, is Muslim and poor.  In the American WASP imagination, being Muslim makes you a non "white", even if the distinction here is purely imaginary.  And quite frankly, at least to the American news media, which isn't really friendly to Christianity anymore, it's the latter category that really matters. They are poor.

So they aren't Europeans, which makes them not white to the benighted WASPs, and they are poor, both of which makes it really easy to ignore them.

The poor don't get much press.

The foreign poor truly don't get much press.

None of which this is really about.

Poverty and extreme wealth are.

I hope, as we all should, that those trapped in the submarine are rescued.  I also hope that the refugees are relived from their maritime peril.  But let't be honest.

There is something fundamentally immoral about a nation with so much wealth, at the very upper ranks, that people can spend $250,000 to go visit a maritime grave.

This statement would apply if they were Americans.

Except here, they actually aren't all Americans, as I thought they likely were.  

Most of them aren't.

Nor are they all "white", as the Huffington Post would define it.

They are Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his son Suleman Dawood; Hamish Harding, a British businessman, pilot and space tourist; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Titanic expert; and Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of the sub business.

Now, with at least Rush, his being there makes sense.  And maybe Nargeolet is there for an academic or service reason.

Harding?  Space tourist?  Too much money by any definition.

The Dawood's.  Well, I''m not in a position to judge, nor really are probably very many others.

So this story takes a weird turn, from what was originally presumed.

So why do we find it fascinating?

And now what is the moral equation?  Do we complain, now, when we learn that two of them are really wealthy Pakistani's, or would that be beyond the pale?

Well, we are fascinated in part because it fits into the category of bizarre disaster that we are unlikely to endure ourselves.  It's the same reason that Chilean mine disasters are fascinating.  Mediterranean maritime disasters, however, are not, however, as they're part of a massive ongoing crisis that we'd rather not think about.

At any rate, a tourist business taking people to see a maritime grave for really high dollar is unseemly.

And any vacation frolic that costs $250,000 suffers from a moral deficit.

Most of the time, the Supreme Court is highly predictable.

And most of the time, it actually doesn't rule "right/left".

Which is why nobody who knows anything about the law is, or should be, surprised by the recent ruling on Native American adoptions.

In order to express surprise, you have to be a legal pundit who doesn't practice law, like Nena Totenberg.

And this is also why nobody thinks that the Court is going to adopt the "independent state legislature theory".

That'll probably be a nine to nothing ruling, in spite of people like Robert Reich running around the streets declaring that the sky is falling, and Justice Thomas is a baddy.

Also, most of the time, the Court doesn't get any credit for being predictable, rational, and even boring.

What fun would that be, after all?

Lex Anteinternet: Monday at the Bar: The best of both worlds: Rodeo...

From Opal Harkin's Instagram. The sentiments on the mortaboard are quite correct.  FWIW, it's a little unusual to see mortorboard for a law school graduation, more typical is a certain sort of old style beret.

Earlier this week, I ran this post:

Lex Anteinternet: Monday at the Bar: The best of both worlds: Rodeo...:   

Monday at the Bar: The best of both worlds: Rodeo and law live side by side in the life of CNFR competitor

 

The best of both worlds: Rodeo and law live side by side in the life of CNFR competitor

When I did so, I did it without commentary.

Didn't have the time to comment.

Opal Harkins (what a delightful old school name), has had an impressive rodeo career, and a pretty impressive academic one as well.  Included in that academic career, she's just completed attending law school.   That's what made me curious, as it's really unusual.

It would not, quite frankly, be easy to go to law school and be on a rodeo team, although one of the members of my law school class was a place kicker (or whatever the kicker on a football team is called) for one year on the UW football team, and one of the members of my father's dental school class was also a rodeo team member for his university, and a very accomplished one at that.  The latter, I'd note, would be even more difficult than going to law school and being on a rodeo team.

So, it's possible.

Opal Harkins had a long association with rodeo, and did throughout her academic career.  She was, for example, the National High School Rodeo Queen for 2016-17, which I only know due to this story.  Oddly enough, she was sort of homeschooled, although through what I'd call remote schooling for high school students, which means she studied from home, but through an online program run through a Montana university, but had home school aspects.  Indeed, when I read it I thought it was probably because she came from a remote ranch, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The five Harkins siblings are memorable for their talents alone – but their unique names contribute to their trademark as well. The three oldest siblings are boys: Odis, Othniel and Ogden, followed by two girls: Ouana and Opal.

“The story is that in my mom’s family, their names all start with “Sh” and my dad’s brothers and sister all start with “J,” says Harkins. “Odis was named after my great-grandpa, and after that, they had to keep the tradition up and find
“O” names for all the rest of us.”

Like the rest of her siblings, Harkins was homeschooled until 7th grade, when she had the choice to attend public school, which she did for a year. “My parents decided to homeschool all of us so they could be in control of what we were being taught,” says Harkins. “They wanted to be the main influence in our life and didn’t want it to be teachers or other students.” They learned through a Christian curriculum, including taking Bible classes since they were young.

The homeschool flexibility worked perfectly for a family that loved to rodeo together.

“We had schedules when we were all homeschooled together, we would work ahead on cold days and then ride all day on warm ones,” she says.

Now, technically a junior in high school, Harkins is again homeschooling and also taking college courses through the Montana State University – Billings High School Connections program. When she graduates high school, she will also have an associate’s degree in English.

“Being homeschooled is the reason why I am where I am in college right now,” she says. “It taught me to be self-motivated, and being able to take high school classes when I was in 8th grade is the reason why I was able to start college my freshman year of high school.”

Following graduating from that, she went on to university and then on to law school, staying in rodeo the the entire time.  She obtained a big following in her high school years, with one print commentary calling her "a natural doe-eyed beauty", something I wouldn't have expected to see in print following the 1940s.

There's a number of Harkins who are lawyers in Billings, and she's likely (well. . .is) the daughter of one of them.  So she's basically following in her father's footsteps.  I wonder, in fact, if she'll hang her shingle there.

There are a lot of negative things posted here about the practice of law, without a doubt, including some comments about how lawyers themselves, surrendering their professionalism to their wallets, and law schools, having churned out vast numbers of lawyers in the 60s and 70s, have caused the profession not to be that.

And those comments are deserved.  

A former president of the Wyoming State Bar had a "proud to be a Wyoming lawyer" campaign at one time.  Well, that was before the UBE meant that a lot of those lawyers never darkened Wyoming's border.  Plenty of "Wyoming lawyers" today are Colorado lawyers, or Utah lawyers, or Texas lawyers, and that's for the money.

What else would it be for?

But in fairness, law has and still does provide a means for a lot of rural people to make an in town living. And a lot depends on the type of law a person does.  Litigation is one thing, estate planning quite another.  Domestic relations, something else.  As a child of a lawyer, perhaps she knows which direction she's headed.  A lot of new law school grads really don't.

One of the things noted in the article was this:

One day, she’ll have a career that will allow her to continue rodeoing, she’ll be able to afford her own nice trailer and nice horses.

I'm inclined to say, don't bet on it.  And don't bet on having the time to be able to enjoy, well, pretty much anything of that type.  But maybe I'll be wrong, and indeed lots of lawyers I know manage to do just that.  And that says something about matching a career to a personality, something there is very little effort to do, at least by my observation, for law students.  

Well, anyhow, remarkable story.