Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal Mecosta, Michigan
10/31/2009
Edmund Burke and the Habits of Liberty Conference
The Adolphus Hotel, Dallas, TX
3/20/2010
2010 Dallas Conference - Whose America? National Identity and the Fragility of American Constitutionalism
“What would the Founders do?” That is a question we have heard a lot in recent years. In order to answer the question, first we must understand what the Founders’ vision was.In this lecture, Bradley C. S. Watson, associate professor of political science at Saint Vincent College and author of Living Constitution, Dying Faith, examines that vision, as well as the “hostility” of the trajectory of Western civilization to American Founding principles.
Click here to watch the video of Watson’s lecture. Or if you prefer to listen to the audio, go here.
A convicted child-beater and self-proclaimed bloody murderer was addressed obsequiously as 'Mister' Moat, and assumed to care about the offspring he liked to thump so hard that their teachers spotted the bruises.
That is the only reason Moat was in prison at all. He could have frightened adults all his life and nothing would have happened.
Like all callous societies, we over-compensate by being extra-sentimental about children.
But even for this, he received only a pathetic nine-week jail term (fraudulently stated to be 18 weeks).
He was told (inaccurately) that 'You have a future'. When at last the police stumbled across him, he was spoken to nicely by 'negotiators', who tossed him water and sandwiches as gently as possible, in case he thought they were throwing them at him.
The ridiculous expansion of the universities has simply devalued degrees to the point of meaninglessness.
Promises of improved job chances turn out to mean 70 applications for every vacancy and graduates being urged to flip burgers.
The worst part of this is that all these defrauded young people are now starting their lives with a large and demoralising debt, having in effect mortgaged their futures to postpone their arrival in the dole queue by three years.
The tectonic plates of American politics are shifting. A powerful concatenation of demographic forces is transforming the American electorate and reshaping both major political parties. And, as demographic trends continue, this transformation and reshaping will deepen. The Democratic Party will become even more dominated by the emerging constituencies that gave Barack Obama his historic 2008 victory, while the Republican Party will be forced to move toward the center to compete for these constituencies. As a result, modern conservatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP.
The bulk of this paper provides a detailed analysis of the demographic shifts transforming the electorate. This analysis is followed by a brief discussion of the geographical dimension of these changes. It concludes by exploring the long-term implications of these changes for the parties.
Key findings on the electorate’s demographic transformation are examined below.Heavily Democratic minority voters (80 percent for Obama) increased their share of votes in U.S. presidential elections by 11 percentage points between 1988 and 2008, while the share of increasingly Democratic white college graduate voters rose 4 points. But the share of white working-class (not college-educated) voters, who have remained conservative in their orientation, has plummeted by 15 points.
That’s a pattern that’s repeated in state after state, helping send those states in a Democratic direction. In Pennsylvania, for example, the white working class declined by 25 points between 1988 and 2008, while white college graduates increased by 16 points and minorities by 8 points. And in Nevada, the white working class is down 24 points over the same time period, while minority voters are up an amazing 19 points and white college graduates by 4 points.
These trends will continue, and the United States will be majority-minority nation by 2042. By 2050, the country will be 54 percent minority as Latinos double from 15 percent to 30 percent of the population, Asian Americans increase from 5 percent to 9 percent, and African Americans move from 14 to 15 percent.
But there's more to the story than just this. As Teixeira says, "On social issues, Millennials support gay marriage, take race and gender equality as givens, are tolerant of religious and family diversity, have an open and positive attitude toward immigration, and generally display little interest in fighting over the divisive social issues of the past." That's bad news for the Republican Party, which has shown little willingness to soften its stand on cultural concerns like these — all of which are core hot button issues for its Tea Party base.
T-Mobile, the U.S. wireless provider, is owned by telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY.PK - News). It is the No.4 cellular company in an American market that only supports two really successful firms -- AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless. Even the third-largest company in the market -- Sprint-Nextel (NYSE: S - News) -- has 50 million customers. T-Mobile had 34 million customers at the end of last year. T-Mobile only had a profit of $306 million in 2009. That was down from $483 million in 2008. T-Mobile not only faces three larger competitors, it also has to begin to offer 4G service to compete with Sprint's new WiMax service and LTE-based products from AT&T (NYSE: T - News) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ - News). T-Mobile may seek a partner to offer a 4G network, but there are no super-fast broadband networks likely to be finished before its three rivals offer the service. As it now stands, T-Mobile has no future in the U.S. A merger with Sprint-Nextel has been mentioned several times. The combined company would have a customer base about the same size as AT&T or Verizon. And the transaction would probably make Deutsche Telekom a large owner of the combined operation. Another alternative would be a merger with Virgin Mobile. Maybe Deutsche Telekom will just change the firm's name.I've been a T-Mobile customer since I thought they offered the best plan for me; if things change in my life I might be willing to give up the cell phone.
Below is a draft of a letter to an imaginary politician up for election later this year:
Dear ______________
You are currently running for office as _____________________ in ____________________. As you know, we are living through economically tough times, and I hear a lot about how the economy can be brought back to stability and prosperity.
However, have you ever considered that economic growth might actually not return? That we might have to build a societal infrastructure based on less?
If so, what would be your plans to mitigate such a situation, to make sure that life can go on for your constituents in a future where "more each year" is no longer possible?
Or alternatively, if you don't have any plans - are you 100 percent certain that growth and prosperity will ever return, and if so, why is it that you see no risk worth looking at?
What I can find to counter Tom Fleming’s argument is rather limited and would consist of the following: Although we’re holding an exceedingly poor hand and the momentum is mostly on the other side, we should use those resources that are available to us to keep our enemies from gaining more ground. Some arguments will be more helpful than other ones; and which ones will work will depend on the circumstances. For example, the appeal to nullification that Tom Woods makes in his most recent book is not likely to get us very far, given our two-party monopoly of the political conversation and given the erosion of any understanding of states as living communities.
The kind of state consciousness that existed when Jefferson and Madison raised the idea of nullification two hundred and fifteen years ago is a thing of the past. It does not relate to our less cohesive, perpetually mobile, and by now multiculturalized society. Such appeals will work even less once the GOP crawls back into power and predictably starts acting like the Democrats. Once that happens, Tom’s case will offend the Reps even more than the Dems.
But when telling arguments, including those in support of Nullification, can be marshaled to advance our interest in the short or middle term, we should never hold back. We should be every bit as opportunistic as we can in pursuing our goals. And we should stress the notion of legality in a society that continues to pay homage to that principle, however inconsistently. Calling attention to laws and precedents protecting our property and freedom from government attempts to de- and recode us behaviorally may be our best weapon against a derailed political order. In any case, doing something is better than simply giving up.
Another thought is that global democratic empires like the U.S. and the EU are beginning to suffer from the effects of overload. At this moment the EU’s human rights czars are trying to get Catholic countries, like Italy, to remove religious symbols, and in particular crucifixes, from public buildings. For years the EU has imposed PC guidelines on how its members should deal with invasions of Third World immigrants, gay and feminist lifestyles, and historical narratives that do not fit the imposed antifascist standards.
Similar disputes about control being placed on local and regional authorities have erupted in the U.S.; and we may hope that such dissension will continue to surface and grow even more severe. In these situations claims for more decentralized authority are likely to become more common; and even if these claims won’t bring about total system changes, they can assist us, for a time, in limiting bureaucratic and judicial overreach from the top.
Having made these defenses I should admit that I share Tom Fleming’s general pessimism about making the U.S. Constitution work again, as it once understood as mandating distributed authorities. Whether a constitution is written, as in the American case, or viewed as a series of unwritten precedents, as in the British case, there is no way to prevent its straying once the society that was willing to live by its restraints has vanished.
