My blood-kin Pioneered and Founded the State of Tennessee. They formed a huge company from land they claim the Cherokee sold to them. Did they tell the truth?
The Tennessee Lawmakers lied when they said the demonstrations against Gun Violence was just like the Jan.6th. insurrection. I thought these Republicans claimed there was nothing wrong with what those demonstrators did in DC. By punishing two fellow members, they are saying – THEY LIED!
They say there is nothing that can be done about Gun Violence. Is there anything that can be done about Trump dividing my Democracy and instigating violence? YES! All he has to do is go on Fox and CONFESS! Tell the people the real historic truth.
“I lied! I hated losing the election. I don’t care about anything – but me! If Americans get hurt, even little children….I DON’T CARE! I don’t care if Democracy ceases to exist. Why should I? It let me down!”
I suggest Tennessee Republicans – JUST STOP VOTING – and do as Trump did. Secede from my Democracy – and reality! Stop voting! Resign from your offices.
I know what you think you are doing. You are creating a Christian Nation – run by white people. If blacks want to join this Relgious Nation, then they have to go along with what white people want – and Jesus – who is…..NOT GOD! Because you claim you OWN the Will of God, God bids me to prove to you, and the world – YOU LIE!
Two days ago I discovered something that is so profound, I am in a postins – TO DESTROY Christianity. I and God warned you, if you keep DOING EVIL…we will take Jesus and God fron you.
As the head of God’s Inquisition, I am going to put Paul of Tarsus on trial for the murder of Mark-John. How do you like them apples – as my mother ‘The Prostitute’ used to tell her four children. Did you know there are FOUR PROSTITUTES in the family tree of Jesus Christ? I didn’t. How did they get there? Was the motive to make Mark look bad, or, just Jesus? Did Mary Magdalene know?
In 1990 I began my novel ‘The Lion of God’. I found out yesterday this is the moniker of Mark-John, who wrote the first gospel. For over ten years I have been ordering Red State Republicans to get out of my Republican Party founded by John Fremont – who is in the family tree of all those Patriots in Tennessee. But hearing the speeches of the Two Austins, I realized MAGA DOPES don’t give a rat’s ass about Democracy – AND HISTORY! They claim they care about Biblical History. Well, you better go get your best Bible Thumping Boys. Does Clarence Thomas know his Bible.
If you can’t live with the results of your voting – JUST STOP VOTING! God and I will make sure no one does you wrong! Trust us!
John ‘God’s Inquisitor’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_Jesus
Women mentioned[edit]
Matthew inserts four women into the long list of men. The women are included early in the genealogy—Tamar, Rachab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” (Bathsheba). Why Matthew chose to include these particular women, while passing over others such as the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, has been much discussed[by whom?].
There may be a common thread among these four women, to which Matthew wishes to draw attention. He sees God working through Tamar’s seduction of her father-in-law, through the collusion of Rahab the harlot with Joshua’s spies, through Ruth the Moabite’s unexpected marriage with Boaz, and through David and Bathsheba’s adultery.[102]
The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible suggests that the common thread between all of these women is that they have associations with Gentiles.[103] Rahab was a prostitute in Canaan, Bathsheba was married to a Hittite, Ruth resided in Moab, and Tamar had a name of Hebrew origin. The women’s nationalities are not necessarily mentioned. The suggestion is that Matthew may be preparing the reader for the inclusion of the Gentiles in Christ’s mission. Others point out an apparent element of sinfulness: Rahab was a prostitute, Tamar posed as a prostitute to seduce Judah, Bathsheba was an adulteress, and Ruth is sometimes seen as seducing Boaz—thus Matthew emphasizes God’s grace in response to sin. Still others[who?] point out their unusual, even scandalous, unions—preparing the reader for what will be said about Mary. None of these explanations, however, adequately befits all four women.[104]
Nolland suggests simply that these were all the known women attached to David’s genealogy in the Book of Ruth.[6]
Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives have been expelled while a third member was spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.
Protesters packed the state Capitol on Thursday to denounce the expulsions of Reps. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson and to advocate for gun reform measures a little over a week after a mass shooting devastated a Nashville school.
Following their expulsion – which House Republicans said was in response to the representatives’ leadership of gun control demonstrations on the chamber floor last week – Jones and Pearson called for protesters to return to the Capitol when the House is back in session on Monday.
Hart, Benton, Boone Brothers
Posted on February 7, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
When I was a boy, Daniel Boone was a Brand Name. American Youth thought he was all about being free in this Democracy. He came here to be himself, and do what he wants. No one could stop him. He is above the law. The truth is, he was in constant litigation after the failure of Boonsborough and Transylvania Company that he co-founded with Colonel Thomas Hart, and his brother, Nathaniel Hart, who are kin to Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and the famous artist of the same name who was father-figure to artist, Jackson Pollack.
Flee Fremont’s Party! Get Out – Now!
Posted on June 17, 2022 by Royal Rosamond Press
Christian Fanatics Should Leave Republican Party
Posted on May 22, 2022 by Royal Rosamond Press
“There is an air of absurdity in attributing a win to God only when Donald Trump is victorious. But Thomas and Meadows were deadly earnest. It is not enough to exercise power in their attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their efforts must be covered in a thick goo of spirituality. The conspirators believed they were doing God’s work. But really, they were attempting to make the Creator of the universe into a partisan hack who favored their (half-baked) political ambitions. In the process, they demonstrated the manifold dangers of the religious impulse in the public realm.“
After Lincoln was FORCED to free the slaves by my kin, John Fremont, TRACEROUS UN-AMERICANS secede from the Union – and go to war with THE LOYALISTS. Residences of The Red States best describe THE PEOPLE Glen Ellmers of the Claremont Institute – describes – then and now!
“According to Ellmers, “Most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term
These Political Philosophers are behind The Jan 6. Insurrection. Members of the Claremont Think Tank went to college. They read and wrote HIGHLY COMPLEX ESSAYS that elevate them – above all others. How many understand the text – a thousand? I can barely grasp it. Most Black Citizens would not understand – a word of what they are saying – and thus would not know where the Elitists are coming from. Add the Brown Skinned Folks from across the border, and, you might have HALF. Now add Dumb White People who vote the Democratic Ticket. How many went to college and know their philosophers like Jaffa does? Harry Jaffa is the Moses of Claremont who leads Unhappy Elitists to the Intellectual Promised Land. Is he a ZIONIST?
“whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.“
Harry and his ilk are saying only Highly Educated People can grasp the idea they ARE UNHAPPY, and thus they own the right to overthrow any government – they please! Slaves, and women who can not vote – are not in The Hunt For Happiness! The Jewish Hunt For Happiness since the Bar Kochba Revolt – has produced a million essays and books. The Jewish Fear of the AGGITATION of The Ignorant Race – as seen by the Lovers of Hitler – permeates American Political Philosophy as promoted by Jewish Think Tanks. Jaffa’s FEAR & HATRED of President Barak Obama, may be THE FUEL of The Trump Insurrection that began the minute he was elected, because, it looked like Hilary was going to carry on Obama’s Dream! The depiction of Obama as another Hitler, may have come out of Claremont. Ginni Thomas interviewed Kennedy, the President of Clarmont. It looks like that interview was disappeared.
We are being led to believe the Thomas’ never HAD intellectual conversations, Bullshit! How does Clarence Thomas feel about Obama? This desire of the PLO to exterminate Israel has ruled American Politic – most of my life! I try to explain to my friend, Mark Gall, how Zionists went after the Hippy and Bohemians, because we wanted PEACE, and we did not want to go to war with Islam. Do you know how many Jews died in both Iraqi Wars?……FOUR!
Black People in this Democracy are not interested in SAVING FOREIGN JEWS, or, Jews! They are interested in saving – THEMSELVES! With the revelations Trump and John Eastman WANTED PENCE DEAD because he would not back The Jaffa Insurrection, and was a proponent of a PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF POWER…..brings us to the very real possibility most Democrats have lost faith in this Democracy, and will not ACCEPT any victories of the Republican Party. They will NOT GO MERRILY ALONG with the Insurrection Party – or its Supreme Court!
Here is what the Thomas’ think about Obama
“Any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart.”
The only hope for our Democracy is the return to John Fremont’s vision. Half of the voters in America can make a very case that EVERTTHING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE – SHOULD BE UNDONE because all agreements must maintain Good Faith. What does Aristotle have to do with it. Restore Woe vs. Wade – NOW! Jaffa and his ilk are not in charge of our morality!
“Jaffa points out that safety and happiness are the principal virtues of Aristotelian political life in his Politics.”
Republicans met at a restaurant after Obama got elected. They CONSPIRED to the TAKE THE JOY OUT OF THE VICTORIOUS DEMOCRATS. They did the same thing with Biden. It is clear to me, the Boys at Claremont believe if you TAKE AWAY THE JOY OF THE IGNORANT MASSES – MANILUTLATE BY THE ELITIST MEDIA – then they will be discouraged to vote. For, they only have joy when they sock it to the Jews – and the College Graduates – who become Republicans. In this way, Democrats – ARE JUST LIKE HITLER! This is 1984 Rubber-room Bullshit!
Joyful Jaffa was tickled by The Southern Strategy that got Rednecks to become Republicans and vote the Jesus Is Pure Joy Ticket, because this crushed the Civil Rights Movement of Doctor of Theology, King. College educated Liberal Democrat Jews, were not interested in Kerchner’s Fake Zeal For Zion, that would reduce America to be the Powerful Zionist Army of Emperor Jesus, and King David Trump – who is the NEW LINCOLN! This Jaffanized Cynicism – has destroyed this Democracy. What does Clarence Thomas and his TREACHEROR WIFE think about Martin Luther King?
Get out, and take your pointed spears and treacherous flags with you!
John Presco
Among the many disturbing revelations in the post-2020-election text-message correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is their tone of religious certainty.
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“This is a fight of good versus evil,” wrote Meadows. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing.” In another, Thomas threatens: “You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all.”
There is an air of absurdity in attributing a win to God only when Donald Trump is victorious. But Thomas and Meadows were deadly earnest. It is not enough to exercise power in their attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their efforts must be covered in a thick goo of spirituality. The conspirators believed they were doing God’s work. But really, they were attempting to make the Creator of the universe into a partisan hack who favored their (half-baked) political ambitions. In the process, they demonstrated the manifold dangers of the religious impulse in the public realm.
Christian Fanatics Should Leave Republican Party | Rosamond Press
Former President Donald Trump on Friday fired back at the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
“There’s no clearer example of the menacing spirit that has devoured the American left than the disgraceful performance being staged by the unselect committee,” Trump said at a conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Nashville, Tennessee.
“They’re con people,” Trump continued. “They’re con artists.”
Weeks later, former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn urged leaders of the effort to move to a more remote location, an isolated South Carolina plantation owned by conservative attorney L. Lin Wood. There, they planned weeks of lawsuits, attempts to access voting machines and ways to convince lawmakers to reject key state election results, driven by a frantic mission whose goal was to keep then-President Trump in office after an election he lost.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said the latest hearing of the House Select Committee showed “clear intent” by Donald Trump’s supporters to murder the vice president, speaker of the House and other top government officials.
The mob chanted “hang Mike Pence” as they ransacked the U.S. Capitol looking for the vice president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic lawmakers, and the “Morning Joe” host said the evidence clearly showed they intended to murder anyone standing in the way of Trump becoming a dictator.
The Peace Process Is Dead. Let’s Bury It – Claremont Review of Books
<a href=”http://www.oyez.org/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/justices/clarence_thomas/clarence_thomas_photo.jpg” target=”_blank”>Oyez</a>
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says he always figured there’d be a black president, but that it would have to be someone “the elites” and “the media” approve of—an oblique shot at President Barack Obama.
“[T]he thing I always knew is that it would have to be a black president who was approved by the elites and the media because anybody that they didn’t agree with, they would take apart,” Thomas said during a panel about his life and career at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh in early April. “You pick your person. Any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart.”
The implication of Thomas’ remarks is that President Obama was only elected because he fits with the “prescribed things that they expect from a black person.” Thomas’ statements were were also aired on C-SPAN and picked up by Fox Nation.
It is unusual for sitting Supreme Court Justices to make public criticisms of sitting presidents. “Clarence Thomas seems more interested in becoming a Fox commentator than preserving the integrity of the Court,” says Adam Winkler, a professor at the University of California School of Law. “Justices should not take pot shots at the president. It’s beneath the dignity of the court.”
https://www.claremont.org/basicPageArticles/kennedy-on-daily-caller/
https://www.claremont.org › political-philosophy-writings
The prize-winning historian at work. Kennedy on Daily Caller. The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas interviews Claremont Institute President Brian Kennedy “Despite ..
Equality and Liberty – The American Mind
The imbecility of the democracies in dealing with Hitler was rooted in their inability to see his regime for what it was. There was no diplomatic solution to the problem presented by Hitler.
Exactly the same is true of Arafat and Palestian Authority. Their aim is the extermination of the “Zionist entity.” This is in the original PLO Charter, and it has never been changed, propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding. Wiping Israel from the face of the earth remains their unchanging goal. It is well to remember that Arafat’s predecessor, the Grand Mufti, spent World War II in Berlin, hoping to become the Gauleiter of the Middle East in order to carry out Hitler’s “Final Solution” there. It is also well to remember that PLO sided with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, and cheered the SCUD missiles as they descended upon Israel.
Barak’s concessions at the end of his tenure as Prime Minster were as reckless as Chamberlain’s at Munich. It is a piece of good fortune that Arafat refused to accept them. Among his escalating demand was the return of some two million alleged refugees (or their descendants) from the 1948 war. Such a measure would of itself have marked the end of the Jewish state. Actually, there were in 1948 about 600,000 such refugees, about the same as the number of Jewish refugees from Arab states in the region. Israel absorbed its refugees, but the Arab states have refused to do the same, preferring to keep them in turbulent misery, living sores on the international body politic. Does anyone think that the Germans who were expelled from East Prussia after World War II should be returned?
Kennedy on Daily Caller
The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas interviews Claremont Institute President Brian Kennedy “Despite his low approval ratings, President Barack Obama has not been challenged by Congress to the degree that many conservatives believe that he should be. Claremont Institute president Bri…
Equality and Liberty – The American Mind
Founding of the United States[edit]
Jaffa believed the American founders, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington established the nation on political principles traceable from Locke to Aristotle. While he believed that governments are instituted to protect rights, he acknowledged the higher ends they serve, primarily happiness. The Declaration of Independence says
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Jaffa points out that safety and happiness are the principal virtues of Aristotelian political life in his Politics. Jaffa also points to Federalist No. 43, in which James Madison declares that safety and happiness are the aims of all political institutions, and George Washington’s first inaugural address as cementing the link between human happiness and government and therefore the ancient roots of the American founding.[15]
Abraham Lincoln scholarship[edit]
Jaffa has written two books dealing exclusively with Abraham Lincoln. His first, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, was written in 1959. Forty years later, he followed it with A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Jaffa has also written a number of essays on Lincoln for the Claremont Institute, National Review, and other scholarly journals. Before Jaffa, most conservative scholars, including M. E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, and Willmoore Kendall believed that Lincoln’s presidency represented a substantial growth in federal power and limitation on individual rights.
Glenn is an old friend and Claremont colleague, and in this essay he very usefully updates the reasoning of another old friend and Claremont colleague, John Marini, about the origins and nature of the crisis of free government in America, the role of Donald Trump in responding to this crisis, and the possible road out. Ellmers reworking Marini is like Shakespeare reworking Plutarch (at least in this way!): re-reading them both and comparing is strong aid and inducement to thinking for yourself.
Such shocking changes have taken place in America and the world since John wrote his original TAM essay in 2018 that an update and fresh application of his analysis is very helpful. Especially shocking has been the tyrannical assertion of sovereign authority by the administrative state in the name of scientific expertise, in utter defiance of and overt contempt for the sovereignty of the people. This is the crisis Marini has been studying and thinking through for many years, and Glenn sharply adapts John’s analysis to our unprecedented experiences.
Inside the MAGA world scramble to produce findings suggesting the 2020 election was stolen
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Days after the 2020 presidential election, before all votes were counted and Joseph R. Biden was declared the winner, cyber experts and analysts piled into suites at the Trump Hotel in Washington and other hotel rooms in the area.
© Provided by LA TimesPro-Trump demonstrators rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
The plan was urgent: Crowdsource evidence of electoral fraud to secure a Trump victory with the assistance of his legal team and White House staff.
Reverse Mortgages: Who Are They Good For?
Weeks later, former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn urged leaders of the effort to move to a more remote location, an isolated South Carolina plantation owned by conservative attorney L. Lin Wood. There, they planned weeks of lawsuits, attempts to access voting machines and ways to convince lawmakers to reject key state election results, driven by a frantic mission whose goal was to keep then-President Trump in office after an election he lost.
Since the violent attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop certification of the 2020 election results, much of the scrutiny has been trained on what Trump knew, as well as the involvement of those closest to him, including his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. But it was dozens of true believers gathered in hotels in Washington and at the South Carolina plantation who collected the information upon which the Trump campaign based its unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen, information also used to enlist state and federal lawmakers to assist in a bid to overturn the election results.
The House Jan. 6 select committee is making its case in hearings this month of a coordinated, multistep effort with Trump at the center to subvert the will of voters and keep himself in power — even though he had been repeatedly told there was no credible evidence of fraud that could overturn the election. Much of the proof offered in crafting the “Big Lie” came from a motley crew of both big players and people unfamiliar to the public, who left their daily lives, families and jobs for weeks to travel to Washington or submit affidavits to support the Trump campaign’s widely debunked claims of fraud.
Using public records, months of interviews with people behind the scenes and hundreds of never-before-seen documents, The Times assembled accounts of how the group came together and what it did in the frenetic weeks between election day in 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, to help Trump and his circle push the false theory that the election was stolen.
Several of those involved told The Times they spoke to the committee at length as part of its 10-month investigation, or turned over troves of documents and communications. Others said they haven’t been contacted by the committee.
Some of the key players in the group were already working together in New York City before the election to crack the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic nominee, said former Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne, who was a major funder of the effort. Byrne has increasingly spoken publicly about political conspiracy theories in recent years, particularly after leaving Overstock.com in 2019 over the disclosure that he was in an intimate relationship with Russian agent Maria Butina, who was convicted in the U.S. in connection with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Also a part of the effort were Trump’s former attorney Sidney Powell and personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, along with his client, Michael Trimarco, a New York businessman who has previously worked with finance and technology companies and got involved with the group when Giuliani asked him to look at documents on the laptop.
The group set up shop in hotels around Washington to be ready for the election results, staffing multiple bases with a small army of cybersecurity experts, quantitative analysts, lawyers and former members of law enforcement, convinced that fraud took place and determined to prove it. Some said they believed Trump’s months of claims that he could only lose if the election was stolen, others cared less about politics and were already convinced that fraud tainted all American elections.
“Among the people who believe there were a lot of irregularities and saw the pattern in the irregularities, they were all there,” Byrne told The Times of the effort. “Everyone was there trying to do the same thing, to crack it [and] to find the evidence that could be exposed.”
Getting to the roots of our political crisis
Iwas gratified by my colleague Scott Yenor’s perceptive review of my book, The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America. Yenor raises two important and interrelated issues that deserve a thoughtful reply, especially because the urgency of America’s political situation compels thoughtful citizens to reflect on these fundamental questions.
Speaking of the distinguished Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield, with whom Jaffa had a long and sometimes fractious friendship, Yenor writes,
As Ellmers recounts the confrontation, Mansfield went beyond merely questioning whether America had accomplished all Jaffa had thought. He also out-Aristotled Jaffa.
According to Mansfield, political communities all deteriorate, because they are partisan and hence imperfect. Communities advance a comprehensive claim of justice, but usually only do so up to a point and for the good of one faction. The same old cycle of regimes had come to America, as Tocqueville thought it would.
Yenor points out, correctly, that Jaffa and many of his students disputed the origins of this deterioration, and have argued, in a now substantial body of scholarship, that America’s descent began with (in Yenor’s words) “the intrusion of foreign influences and especially German philosophy during America’s Progressive Era.” Mansfield and Yenor wonder, however, if this explanation is adequate:
Yet this interpretation raises the same deep, regime-level questions that Mansfield raised. If America was the best regime, why was it so vulnerable to capture from this German invasion? Why weren’t the progressives laughed out of town? Early in my career, I was bewitched by Strauss’s “Three Waves of Modernity” essay, where he broadly claimed that the seeds of later modern radicalism are sewn into the origins of modern political thought. Nothing stable or respectable, Strauss argued, could proceed from the modern notion of nature—and subsequent thinkers to Locke worked out that inner logic until there was nothing left of nature or natural rights. This explains why America, founded on a version of the modern idea of nature, was vulnerable to the German invasion. What is the alternative explanation?
Let me respond first on Aristotle, who explicitly asserts that natural right is part of political right. Many of Jaffa’s critics don’t seem to appreciate how the principles explicated in The Politics need to be adapted to changing historical circumstances. To suggest that Aristotle would have mindlessly repeated his formulaic defense of the polis—when that type of regime had been irretrievably destroyed—would be to deny the architectonic role of prudence that Aristotle vigorously defends. For Aristotle, as for Plato, the authority of the gods as the source of law was taken for granted, since all law in the ancient world was sanctioned by the gods of the city. The factionalism that Yenor and Mansfield invoke—the partisan claims of the democrats, oligarchs, etc. described in Aristotle’s subtle taxonomy—operated within or upon a deeper legitimacy of law derived from divine authority.
But as Jaffa demonstrated, the emergence of Christianity as the universal religion of the West undermined this connection between law and piety, and created a crisis in citizenship that afflicted Europe for a millennium. Divided loyalties between priest and prince, battles between popes and kings, and ongoing religious persecution would only find a solution with the principle of religious liberty, which became a fully realized political condition for the first time in history in the United States.
The social compact theory of the American founders appealed to a non-sectarian rational theology, grounded in a new arche, or principle of rule: nature, and the consent arising from equality of natural rights. The American regime of natural rights transcended the factionalism Aristotle describes by establishing a basis for the common good that included every citizen. Therefore, equality as understood by the founders and articulated in the Declaration of Independence was not the partisan claim of the many, but a ground for just government based on the common human nature of the entire community—a principle affirmed by both reason and revelation.
Yenor and Mansfield follow Tocqueville in seeing equality from the perspective of Rousseau—as an impersonal force that needs to be balanced by appeals to man’s natural inequality. But this egalitarian or leveling understanding of equality is not the equality of opportunity proclaimed in the Declaration, which is intended precisely to liberate those “different and unequal faculties,” that Madison memorably celebrates in The Federalist.
Tocqueville’s critique of equality (which Mansfield has repeatedly endorsed) replaces the framers’ standard of nature with an understanding of equality as a historical force. History reveals through time—i.e., through progress or social evolution—what succeeds, and therefore what is true. Nature, however, unlike history, never guarantees success. What is true or just by nature may fail; injustice and falsehood sometimes triumph. The realm of moral freedom established by natural right means that political life and indeed all human conduct is not predetermined. We cannot guarantee success; we can only be worthy of it. Both liberty and equality—which the American founders saw as concomitant—could be lost without effort and attention.
Someone who appeals to the standard of history would seem to believe that human equality must be false because the American experiment is faltering. If the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence were true, Yenor implies, the founders’ experiment would have succeeded in perpetuity. There is, he suggests, “no alternate explanation.” But this is not how the framers understood themselves. While they hoped that future generations would vindicate the justice of their cause, they always saw the truth of human equality as grounded in the laws of nature and nature’s God—propositions that might be denied or suppressed by emerging tyrants, including a tyrannical majority. They never supposed that the United States so conceived was self-sustaining. Continual education in the principles of natural rights and equality would always be necessary. Jaffa, were he alive today, would argue that even if American constitutionalism is collapsing—which is not yet a foregone conclusion—such a contingency would have no bearing at all on the truth of the founders’ principles, although it would be rooted in a failure to apprehend that truth. This is the meaning of Leo Strauss’ memorable lines from Natural Right and History:
Yet however much the power of the West may have declined, however great the dangers to the West may be, that decline, that danger, nay, the defeat, even the destruction of the West would not necessarily constitute a crisis of the West: the West could go down in glory, certain of its purpose, with guns blazing and flags flying. The crisis of the West consists in the fact that the West itself has become uncertain of its purpose.
Speaking of Strauss, I might mention that the “Three Waves of Modernity” essay Yenor mentions describes the development of modern philosophy; it is not a commentary on America—which is a product of political statesmanship, not merely theory. Indeed Strauss makes a point of ending that very essay by reminding his readers that “a theoretical crisis does not necessarily lead to a practical crisis” since “liberal democracy, in contradistinction to communism and fascism, derives powerful support from a way of thinking that cannot be called modern at all: the premodern thought of our western tradition.”
Yenor’s critique of the failure of equality could be just as easily applied to his own field of research: the family. If a married man and woman raising their own children according to biological sex roles is obviously better for everyone concerned, why isn’t the radical gender-queer agenda “laughed out of town”? Does the success of the trans liberation movement establish its truth? I have heard Scott speak eloquently in defense of the moral basis of the natural family. Is that morality now to be regarded as false simply because fanatics and ideologues have waged a successful propaganda war of sexual revolution—just as the Progressives waged a propaganda war of political revolution? Like the United States, the success of the family is dependent upon both good habits and opinions.
Jaffa, indeed, predicted decades ago the current madness of puberty blockers and chemical child abuse in the name of sexual freedom. He knew that a part of humanity will forever chafe at the demands imposed by the objective moral order, and will seek to transcend those demands. This is an old story of hubris and self-deception, exacerbated by the power of modern science. Ever since the serpent in the Garden promised eternal life, mankind has been led astray by the false belief that the tree of knowledge could conquer the limits of nature. For Jaffa, as for Lincoln, human equality and the morality of the family are two sides of the same coin: one can’t defend the one without the other. The same nature that makes us men and women makes us more than beasts and less than angels. The tyranny now threatening the United States, which denies the authority of nature, is the enemy of both morality and equality. Or rather, the new oligarchy understands morality and equality (as well as liberty, rights, and law) in an entirely different way. Although woke progressivism sometimes uses the older language, it also tips its hand by invoking its own replacement terminology, such as equity, self-expression, or social justice. The agenda of the radical Left has nothing to do with “equality” as the founders understood it.
Many (though certainly not all) Straussians share Claremont’s alarm about today’s leftist equity agenda. We agree, Claremonsters emphatically included, that this radical egalitarianism is antithetical to liberty and constitutional government. But what exactly should be the ground of our objection? If it is wrong to apportion rights and privileges according to race, gender, and other categories of identity politics, then what is right? Jefferson, Lincoln, and Jaffa had their answer. If Mansfield and Yenor do not accept that answer—that is, the equality of individual natural rights—then what, to ask Yenor’s own question, is the alternative?
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