E-Pluribus | April 9, 2024
What happened to the presidency? In praise of restorationism; and is freedom too hard?
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Gene Healy: Culture Warrior in Chief
George Washington’s legendarily humble approach to the presidency upon its founding seems quaint compared with the all-powerful chief executive we elect and crown every four years. Writing at Reason, Gene Healy laments the overreach and says we’ve made Alexander Hamilton look like Pollyanna in retrospect (my words, not Healy’s.) But if we expect the president to fix the culture (and everything else!) to our liking, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
Over the past several decades, as our politics took on a quasi-religious fervor, we've been running a dangerous experiment: concentrating vast new powers in the executive branch, making "the most powerful office in the world" even more powerful. Fundamental questions of governance that used to be left to Congress, the states, or the people are now settled, winner-take-all, by whichever party manages to seize the presidency.
Worse still, recent presidents have deployed their enhanced powers to impose forced settlements on highly contested, morally charged issues on which Americans should be free to disagree. In the age of identity politics, the modern president has become our culture warrior in chief. Unless and until he's disarmed, we'll have "uncivil war" and American carnage from here to the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
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The culture wars of the late 20th century were tied up with the rise of the Christian Right. The battle lines were religious vs. secular—"orthodox" vs. "progressive," in Hunter's formulation. Buchanan's 1992 convention speech shocked the pundit class by describing the struggle as "a religious war going on in this country."
Yet this particular Thirty Years' War wasn't terribly bloody. The stakes often seemed more symbolic than real. A lot of the fights were literallyabout symbols—desecration of sacred objects: burning the American flag, or, in the controversy over Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, dunking a crucifix in urine, calling it art, and getting the federal government to write you a check for it.
Most significantly, it wasn't fought with the weapons of presidential power. Executive orders and administrative diktat were rarely deployed to settle culture-war fights.
[. . .]
Presidents have become our primary policy makers. Whenever the presidency changes parties, McGinnis and Rappaport note, "rules affecting almost every aspect of American life will pivot 180 degrees." The shift from Obama to Trump, for example, carried with it reversals on net neutrality rules, fuel economy limits on new vehicles, and which immigrants can come to the United States, as well as new rules governing free speech disputes and sexual assault claims on college campuses across the country.
What's more, legal changes made by presidential decree may be locked in for as long as the president's party holds the office—even when there's majority support in Congress to overturn them. Attempts to rein in presidential lawmaking must themselves run the gauntlet of the ordinary legislative process, subject to presidential signature or veto. The default setting of American government has shifted toward presidential unilateralism. The president now enjoys broad power to do as he pleases unless and until Congress can assemble a veto-proof supermajority to stop him.
In all the discussion of polarization, McGinnis and Rappaport note, "one important factor…has gone largely undiscussed: the deformation of our federal governing structure." The drift toward one-man rule both intensifies partisan fury and makes it more dangerous.
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Alexander Hamilton supposed that "energy in the executive" would lead to "steady administration of the laws." But there are no permanent victories in politics, so that energy can mean whipsawing between radically different policies based on the vagaries of the Electoral College. Puberty blockers and drag queen story hours go from compulsory to forbidden every four to eight years, depending on which political party wins the presidency. At some point you have to ask yourself: Is this any way to run a country?
Read it all here.
Jon Gabriel: From Conservatism to Restoration
If conservatives are meant to conserve, Jon Gabriel at Discourse Magazine argues that that ship has sailed, in part because there’s so much disagreement about what to conserve. While the meaning of “conservatism” is difficult to pin down today, Gabriel writes that our varied definitions of the philosophy are less important than charting a path forward to what he calls “restorationism.”
When choosing between the left and right, conservatism has always been more hospitable to stark reality. We accept a flawed human nature, while progressives burden themselves with perfectibility. Where the right seeks equal opportunity, the left demands equal results. Conservatives look to the possible, progressives to the impossible.
When considering the political landscape, however, it’s tough to know what conservativism even is these days. Trump fans think it’s high tariffs, while free marketeers want them kept low. America-firsters want all the troops back home, while internationalists see a need to intervene. Some want tax cuts, others want to fight the “woke” liberals and most revere free speech ... except maybe not for those groups over there, who are so obviously wrong. Where Reagan’s three-legged stool united defense, social conservatism and economic conservatism, today each leg is splintered into pieces.
This isn’t a new problem: The right has long struggled to define the term “conservatism,” which makes sense since it’s always been less a political ideology than a life philosophy, or perhaps even an attitude.
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Standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” may help stem the growth of leftist ideology, but it does nothing to advance an alternative philosophy. Actually promoting conservatism requires intentional, aggressive work. Daily, we must evaluate the endless stream of proposed changes, promote the few good ones and destroy the bad.
As Reagan put it, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
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Here’s the plain fact: “Conservatism” doesn’t make sense as a label when there’s little left to conserve. This sentiment gets pushback from old-line Republicans who insist they’ve been successful from the 1980s to today. There’s some truth to this. A few things have been conserved—Second Amendment rights, pro-market economic policies, religious liberty (for now)—but so, so much has been lost in that time.
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[I]t’s time to change our focus. To that end, I propose that we are no longer conservatives; we are restorationists. We seek not to conserve the role of tradition in our society but to restore tradition to its rightful place. Similarly, there are no national borders left to conserve; they must be restored.
The family is scattered, and we must reintroduce this cornerstone of civilization. (That includes gender norms promoted from the dawn of time.) Free speech must be placed back in the academy, workplace and civil society.
[. . .]
This is no longer the time for conservation. On to restoration.
Read it all.
John Ketcham: Ready for Freedom?
At City Journal, John Ketcham examines a new book by attorney Philip Howard that urges Americans to recapture the spirit of freedom upon which the country was founded. But can we handle it? Personal accountability is, well, personal, and the culture prefers to think in terms of groups. Trying to put the genie back in the bottle will doubtless be as difficult as it has always proven to be.
In a now-obscure 1960s BBC interview, Malcolm Muggeridge, the English satirist, journalist, and convert to anti-Communism (and later Christianity) declared: “I hate government. I hate power. I think that man’s existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.”
That sentiment of Muggeridge’s—the anti-authoritarian spirit of the 1960s—is the starting point of Everyday Freedom, the latest book by attorney and good-government advocate Philip Howard. Reformers of that era felt that biased individuals couldn’t be trusted with discretion.
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But the worthy goal of limiting institutional power ran aground with the reformers’ emphasis on grievance and resolution. Howard chronicles how the discretion that had characterized an earlier mode of governance gave way to a new system of individual rights and impersonal rules.
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The government’s shift from discretion to bureaucracy resulted in the culture becoming more litigiousness and risk-averse, making Americans less able to take responsibility for daily decisions. Today’s government leaders can’t manage public workers without unions’ interference or undertake infrastructure projects without years of delays and huge cost overruns. Even teachers can’t discipline public school kids without the potential for drawn-out hearings. But while Howard has long sought a simpler and more cost-effective government, he has come to see that “the greater danger is not ineffective government, but the corrosion of American culture.”
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In Howard’s world of personal agency, everyone is held accountable for his decisions. Lawmakers can’t shirk tough moral and policy choices by deferring to the current rule of rules. Managers and executives vested with firing power must cut ties with poor performers and ill-tailored personalities. Self-dealing will be unlawful, but people generally will interact and work without fear of legal repercussions. Broadly shared norms will reestablish a culture of trust and cooperation from local communities upwards.
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[T]he status quo is untenable. To see how far rules have run amok, look no further than America’s exorbitantly expensive infrastructure or the massive university bureaucracies meant to ensure compliance with policies like diversity, equity, and inclusion and Title IX. By contrast, Howard notes, when exigency demands throwing out the rulebook, the seemingly impossible becomes reality. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro rebuilt a collapsed stretch of I-95 in just 12 days. President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed developed and mass produced Covid-19 vaccines months ahead of estimates.
Everyday Freedom calls on individuals, families, and communities to exercise newfound authority in the pursuit of flourishing lives. By the last page, the book acts as a mirror, staring back at readers with a challenging question: Are we ready to live up to the responsibilities of such freedom?
Read the whole thing.
Around Twitter (X)
The Free Press has a damning piece out from a current (as of this moment) employee exposing the extreme left-leaning environment at National Public Radio:
Jacob Mchangama of The Future of Free Speech calls out Brazil for “‘defending democracy’ through censorship” in a current case involving Elon Musk and Twitter/X:
And finally, via Riley Gaines and Martina Navratilova, that thing that hardly ever happens seems to be happening an awful lot: