"Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth."

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?:

When asked about constraints on his power, President Trump replied: “There is one thing. My own morality.” Not Congress. Not Courts. Not the constitution. Not law, domestic or international. Not allies. “My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” His party can’t stop him. The party of Lincoln is now “the party of Donald Trump” acknowledged Lindsey Graham when discussing the primary loss of Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to impeach Trump. Cassidy was one of a string of Republican incumbents that Trump pushed out of the party, alongside critic Thomas Massie, and Republican Indiana state legislators who opposed redistricting. A variety of different terms exist to give meaning to the current moment in American governance, some old, some new. Fights over specific terms seem mostly pointless to me, academic in the worst way. What matters is if the language and underlying concepts helps to deepen our understanding of what is going on. For me personalism has played that role. Drawn from comparative politics studies, personalism centers on parties and systems that serve a single individual. Trump was able to grab the Grand Old Party and purge it of dissent. I don’t think there is a comparable example where a mature and strong political party was so captured. It is an extraordinary thing, but the Republican Party became more personalist after January 6. The assault on the Capitol served as the ultimate loyalty test. In the aftermath, his critics were purged. Trump didn’t bother appearing in a primary contest, so firm was his hold on the party.

1. The leader is everywhere

While Republicans made “Obamacare” an epithet, Trump sees the power of putting his names on things, and so we now have TrumpRx. Trump’s name, image and signature are everywhere, draped on government buildings, national park passes, visas, savings accounts, currency, monuments, battleships and passports. Trump’s followers are free to erect gold statues on private property, but the use of public spaces and resources for the worship of individuals should reflect some collective agreement. Not for Trump. While Presidents have things named after them all the time, this is different in a number of respects.

Trump is breaking norms intended to convey a republican government, such as the idea that current Presidents are not Kings, and would not have their image or signatures on currency.

Trump is using his power as President to coerce others to adopt his likeness. In the past, champions of former Presidents might raise campaigns to rename public places. While President, Trump is suggesting that various stadiums, airports, or train stations be named after him — with the implication that he might make life difficult for those who oppose him.

History is literally being rewritten in public spaces. For example, the National Portrait Gallery removed text alongside Trump’s portrait that mentioned January 6.

The sheer volume and gaudiness of this campaign. Trump’s personal aesthetic defines public spaces in the nation’s capital, with no meaningful public input. He decides to tear down the East Wing and what should replace it. He decides to turn the reflecting pool into some garish swimming pool color. He decides if DC needs a massive arch. Others might sue, but Trump treats public property as personal property. While the tacky gold decorations in the Oval Office can be removed by a successor, remaking DC into an outdoor Trump casino will be much harder to reverse.

Whether Trump likes or is welcomed by the institution is irrelevant. Trump is trying to close the Institute of Peace, even as it was renamed the Trump Institute of Peace.Trump imposed his name on the Kennedy Center, a beloved DC institution. When artists and audiences stopped coming, Trump closed it in a fit of pique, announcing a remodel for an institution that had just been remodeled. The unwelcome nature of the institutional assault underlines that the renaming are displays of power and coercion.

Trump’s face now dominates government buildings. “These are my buildings, my departments,” he seems to say. Most chilling is the unfurling of such a banner at the Department of Justice, ending any pretense of a maintaining the separation between the justice system and a wildly corrupt president.

2. The rule of law is secondary to the leader’s whims

Not so long ago, John Adams principle “A government of laws, not of men” was a staple of political discourse, a piece of unassailable rhetoric so undeniable that it could be used to to win neutrals to your argument. We hear this a bit less from the Republican side now. Trump’s personal defense lawyers run the Department of Justice, and take pains to advertise we are now a government of men — well one man — and not laws that are equally applied. The Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been personally intervening in the Epstein case to protect Trump. He also recently boasted that every Department of Justice prosecutor and FBI agent who was involved in investigations of Trump were no longer in government, having been fired or pushed out. The Department of Justice is now Trump’s law firm, used to target his enemies on Trumped-up charges, or those he wants to neutralize or get on his side, such as broad swaths of civil society like law firms or universities. Under this environment, crossing the leader, in the smallest way, means risking the full force of the federal government upon you. Because Trump owns the DOJ, he can tie you up in court forever, at no cost to him.

3. The inner circle has free rein to pillage

In a personalist regime, the government will never investigate Trump, even as he orchestrates unprecedented conflicts of interest and opportunities for corruption. The Trump family has branched out from real estate to crypto, arms manufacturing, and prediction markets — profitable opportunities that remain profitable because other people assume their proximity to power can be used to leverage favored treatment. For example, regulators who raise questions about these businesses can expect to be pushed out of their jobs. Trump trades stocks for companies he boosts on social media, or who have business with the administration, because conflict of interest policies don’t exist anymore.

[...]

5. Presidential vibes, not facts, determine our new reality

One downside of a personalist regime is that it creates information bubbles, where the whims of a 79-year old man cannot be questioned, and so becomes the operational reality for our government. America is at war with Iran. A broadly unpopular war that was pursued with no discussion during the election. Sometimes Trump calls it a war, sometimes he insists its not. Sometimes he says the war is over, and the enemy has surrendered, sometimes he rages at them for their ongoing hostilities. He presents what sounds like extraordinary concessions to Iran as some sort of victory. It depends on the day or the hour, his moods, or considerations such as the need to temporarily juice the stock market. Cabinet officials and spokespersons routinely engage in nonsense to accommodate these whims, but so too is the entire machinery of the most expensive and sophisticated military force in world history.

[...]

7. Only loyalists need apply

It is not enough that evidence of loyalty to Trump has now been written into hiring and promotion policies for civil servants. New hires are getting the message. A couple of months ago, Liberty University Law School told students seeking internship opportunities and full-time opportunities that being “aligned politically with President Trump” was critical, more important than grades. In case there was any confusion, a follow-up email said: “only students who are interested in advancing the President’s initiatives and delivering wins for the American Worker should apply.” The message — loyalty to one man matters more than anything — is seeping through the minds of anyone looking to work for your government.

God created all earthly things for man; and man himself, as regards his being and his essence, has been created for God and not for any other creature, even if, as regards his actions, he has obligations towards the community as well.

- Pope Pius XII (Address to Midwives, On the Nature of Their Profession)

Again, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever [… a]nd immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting, and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.

- C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, pages 74, 74-75)

A just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human person. The person represents the ultimate end of society, by which it is ordered to the person: "Hence, the social order and its development must invariably work to the benefit of the human person, since the order of things is to be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the other way around" [Gaudium et spes, §26c]. Respect for human dignity can in no way be separated from obedience to this principle. It is necessary to "consider every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity" [Gaudium et spes, §27a]. Every political, economic, social, scientific, and cultural programme must be inspired by the awareness of the primacy of each human being over society. In no case, therefore, is the human person to be manipulated for ends that are foreign to his own development, which can find complete fulfillment only in God and His plan of salvation: in fact, man in his interiority transcends the universe and is the only creature willed by God for itself. For this reason neither his life nor the development of his thought, nor his good, nor those who are part of his personal and social activities can be subjected to unjust restrictions in the exercise of their rights and freedom. The person cannot be a means for carrying out economic, social, or political projects imposed by some authority, even in the name of an alleged process of the civil community as a whole or of other persons, either in the present or in the future. It is therefore necessary that public authorities keep careful watch so that restrictions placed on freedom or any onus placed on personal activity will never become harmful to personal dignity, thus guaranteeing the effective practicability of human rights. All this, once more, is based on the vision of man as a person, that is to say, as an active and responsible subject of his own growth process, together with the community to which he belongs.

❤️‍🩹

This implies that the heart has been neglected

Underrated

Most philosophers have placed emphasis on rationality:

Intellect and Will

What about the feeling life?

Rooted in the body

Erratic

Ungovernable

Most philosophers have felt the Intellect and Will are there to reign them in

They subscribe value to only these two aspects of the person

Neglecting the third: the Heart

A fuller picture of the person includes all 3

Intellect | Will | Heart

Evidence: The Good Samaritan

Approaching the injured

He understands with his Intellect the right thing to do

He commits himself with his Will to doing it

Suppose he acts out of a sense of duty

But his heart is not involved in the helping

There is a tremendous difference between the Samaritan who helps only out of a sense of duty and the ‘Good’ Samaritan who is also moved by compassion

The Good Samaritan embodies love of neighbor through compassion

Only the Good Samaritan is fully present to the injured man

The Samaritan who acts just out of duty is holding something back from the injured man

He acts in such a way as not to be in the act of helping with his whole being

This significance of acting with the ‘whole being’ is the contribution of heartfelt compassion, of the one acting as a whole person, with the Heart

Not merely a Samaritan, but a ‘Good Samaritan’

I

Notes on John Crosby

Hildebrand on the Heart

2020 Summer Seminar, Session 2

The Founding Fathers and the Roots of Liberalism

By Michael Kumpmann22 August 20242

Michael Kumpmann examines the roots of liberalism, its connection to the American Founding Fathers, and the ongoing debate over human rights and societal responsibilities.

In my previous articles, I have discussed many aspects of the First Political Theory, liberalism, and its relationship with the Fourth Political Theory, both praising and criticizing them. This included examining the Austrian School, Agorism, and several Enlightenment figures like Voltaire, as well as their development from Hobbes through Locke to Rousseau and Kant. I have also reviewed the philosopher Leo Strauss, his views on liberalism and geopolitics, and several other related topics. However, I have not written much about the origins of liberalism and have not yet looked at the central political figures from this period of its development. Since this would indeed make sense, I dare to start with that here. Alexander Dugin also did this regarding the Second Political Theory, which he ultimately rejected, but he also considered and analyzed founding figures like Vladimir Lenin and Mao Tse Tung, highlighting the positive aspects of their thinking. I believe the same should be done with the First Political Theory.

The origins of the First Political Theory of liberalism as a practical statecraft lie in three countries: England, the USA, and France. France is interesting because it directly produced Napoleon as a more traditional “backlash,” but the French Revolution did not serve as a great role model. Both anti-liberals like Savitri Devi, Ernst Jünger, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as liberals like Erich von Kühnelt-Leddihn and Hans Hermann Hoppe, rightly characterize this revolution as the primal catastrophe of modernity and, in fact, as the essence of what kind of modernity must be fought against.

The developments in England were closely linked to those in the USA (especially thanks to the War of Independence). Therefore, it might be most interesting to focus on the American Founding Fathers. In particular, Thomas Jefferson is also interesting for anti-liberals.

Moreover, examining the American Founding Fathers also helps to better understand the dichotomy between classical liberalism and liberalism 2.0.

The Problem with Human Rights

Regarding the American Founding Fathers, it must first be noted that they philosophically based themselves on Locke’s concept of human rights. This concept is, of course, inherently worthy of criticism. Alain de Benoist has written excellent treatises on the highly hypocritical foundations upon which the idea of human rights is based. Carl Schmitt also showed very well how shaky this concept actually is. Even the Marquis de Sade already noticed that liberals criticize the human rights violations of their political opponents more harshly and are all too willing to sweep their own under the rug. Alexander Dugin himself also pointed out that liberals only grant people rights when they conform and participate in liberalism. (A good example is the current demand to partially revoke Björn Höcke’s1 basic rights.)

However, logically, human rights must also be regarded as a flawed concept. The goal of a constitution is actually to establish a minimal state and limit the power of the state. At the same time, it is true, as Francis Parker Yockey said, that liberals possess a hypocritical “friend-enemy distinction”: The main threat to the citizen’s human rights under liberalism is the state. But who is supposed to ensure that human rights are upheld? The state.

Therefore, fundamentally, liberalism is a “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse” philosophy. And this is where ambiguity comes into play, turning human rights in a “minimal state” upside down. Where can human rights be violated? Theoretically, anywhere — even at home in the bathroom. So the state must follow the citizens everywhere to ensure that nothing will happen. Certain human rights also allow for other ambiguities in interpretation. For example, a person has a right to life. Does that mean the state is not allowed to murder the citizen? Must the state monitor that citizens do not murder each other? Or must the state keep citizens away from things like cigarettes since they shorten life expectancy?

Of course, it is like this: Part of the philosophy of human rights is the aphorism “Your rights end where the rights of others begin.” But it is not clearly defined when they do. The philosophy of human rights actually demands that citizens are considerate towards each other and consciously avoid crossing boundaries. However, if you know lawyers, you will notice that often the opposite is the case. Most people want to extend their own rights as far as possible and keep the rights of others as limited as possible. This leads to situations where judgments, contracts, and laws must regulate everything down to the smallest detail. See the fact that Apple’s iTunes terms of service are now much longer than the US Constitution. Or the following fact: Since the beginning of 2024, Mickey Mouse, in its earliest form as Steamboat Willie, has become public domain (without copyright). However, there is a debate over whether Disney could sue an artist if they depicted Mickey with red pants. For people outside the legal profession, this seems rather petty and far removed from “common sense.”

Such developments are not really the ideal of a minimal state that leaves its citizens alone but rather approaches the totalitarian opposite. Therefore, the liberal minimal state already contains a totalitarian seed. One could, of course, argue with Leo Strauss that human rights are not everything and that people also need virtue. And that this totalitarian seed arises more from liberals turning away from virtue and towards mere survival. Benjamin Franklin wrote several texts in which he regarded Aristotelian virtue ethics as the true foundation of the United States and argued that if this were lacking, the USA would collapse. This suggests that Strauss’ theory that the USA is built on Aristotelian virtues is correct and that this was exactly the intention of the American Founding Fathers.

However, one could cynically ask whether truly virtuous people would still need human rights or whether the mere necessity of human rights already proves that the people have strayed from the path of virtue. Of course, the latter is the case. What is also related to this is that human rights almost provoke the “tragedy of the anti-commons.” The tragedy of the anti-commons is essentially a situation where people use their rights to block each other to the point that the situation benefits no one. And human rights provoke such a situation. In a dispute where person X says, “I won’t give person Y this thing, and I have the right to refuse,” the only “retaliation” allowed by human rights is essentially, “You refuse to give me what I want, so I’ll refuse to give you what you want.”

It is also noticeable and interesting that in Western societies, phenomena such as NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), Quiet Quitting (where people deliberately do only the bare minimum at work to avoid being fired), or movements like MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), where young male “failures,” because they cannot obtain what they want from society (usually happiness in love), adopt a total refusal stance towards society, and then the state and society often respond to this with coercive measures (especially on the issue of unemployment). This is often justified by the argument that such people do not recognize what is good for them. See my article on Kant and his problematic definition of reason, which boils down to “If you do not agree, you are not intelligent enough to be allowed to disagree, as only agreement is a sign of intelligence.”

Developments like those described are, of course, toxic for society and should not exist in this form. However, they can be explained with economists like Schumpeter (who viewed the family and its support as the main motivation for work and entrepreneurial activity) and Jordan Peterson’s theories on the importance of responsibility. From a human rights perspective, such total refusal is actually a legitimate decision.

A constructive cooperation within the framework of human rights is only possible if one thinks, “Yes, I have the right to refuse X, but if you give me Y in return, I am willing to give up this right.” This is because only then can a constructive discussion take place where both parties can agree to a deal that benefits both.

This is, in fact, not initially a bad thing and is normal. We existentialists also call this radical freedom. A principle of existentialism is the principle of radical freedom, which states that while there are rules, laws, obligations, and the like, there can never be a hundred percent certainty that the other party will follow them. Even if there are penalties for breaking these rules, the other party still has the option to break them and accept the penalty.

Despite this radical freedom, a basis of trust must be built where both parties can be secure enough that the other will keep the agreement. This requires a mutual desire to be seen as a trustworthy person, which also includes doing things one does not like but has agreed to.

Ernst Tugendhat wrote some good things on this topic. His ideas allow for the argument, from an existentialist perspective, that a market, in certain respects, encourages citizens to become more “moral” because the market compels individuals to adopt the mindset of “I must behave in a way that others can trust me.”

It becomes a problem when some people or groups take the position of “This is my/our right, so no consequences should follow for me/us.” Once such groups gain enough attention, the foundations of basic rights become unhinged, and the fundamental trust in society is undermined. Through “liberalism 2.0,” we have exactly this situation. This attitude of “It’s my right, so no consequences should follow” is alarmingly widespread today. The most well-known examples of this are many feminists but also many people from the millennial generation, for whom even criticism of their behavior is an attack on basic rights. It is noticeable that liberal societies have not been able to prevent such an attitude, which is pure poison for their own foundations, from spreading widely in the population.

Of course, in the spirit of basic rights, one should not respond to such rejection by violating the basic rights of others. But there is no basic right to freedom from any consequences.

Jordan Peterson said in several videos (drawing on existential psychologist Viktor Frankl) that it is foolish for everyone to constantly talk about rights since responsibility is more important than rights and that one can only find happiness by finding something outside oneself, taking responsibility for it, and even sacrificing oneself for it. (For example, family, a project, social causes, the nation, etc.) Because only this can provide a sense of meaning and fulfillment. One’s rights alone cannot do this. Peterson is, of course, right about this and comes surprisingly close to Evola and his description of the warrior ethic as the male path, with the essence of warriorhood being the willingness to suffer for something higher and more important than oneself.

1

Björn Höcke is the head of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in the German state of Thuringia

Original at

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