One of the common arguments against secession, Texas or otherwise, is that the act is illegal.

“Why, the Supreme Court said in Texas v. White in 1869 that a State cannot unilaterally secede!”

I’ll give you the answer I provided at a Ron Paul event in 2010: So what?

There are so many things wrong with that decision, but most important is that it is not based on an original understanding of the Constitution.

The 10th Amendment is the only justification needed for unilateral State secession, and last time I checked, it was not removed from the Bill of Rights.

The Constitution does not prohibit a State from seceding from the Union, and since all powers not delegated to the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States or the people of the States–again, secession isn’t there in either case–the act is legal.

This is precisely how the founding generation, North and South, understood the issue.

We know this because Northerners started discussing secession as early as 1794, just five years after the First Congress met in New York.

It was also the very threat of secession that ultimately drove Edmund Randolph to change course and support the Constitution in Virginia. In other words, he knew that States did not have to join the new government, meaning they could secede.

Again, nothing has changed, just the obiter dictum of Salmon P. Chase, a man who had to declare secession to be illegal, otherwise the entire premise of the War would be invalidated.

Lincoln said secession was illegal. The Republican Party said secession was illegal. If it suddenly became legal, then the War would have been illegal as the United States Congress never declared war on the Confederate States and operated for four years under the premise that the South was simply in “rebellion.” It would have invalidated the Reconstruction governments, the 14th Amendment, and every act of military Reconstruction.

In other words, Chase had a political pistol to his head and did not want to pull the trigger.

Regardless, those who ramble on about “treason” are simply brain dead dopes who have no understanding of American history.

I discuss Texas secession on Episode 740 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

What created American “gun culture”?

If you listen to dimwits like Nick Buttrick, the South.

More specifically, wait for it, SLAVERY.

You see, gun culture was born out of white Southern fear of black people.

They started packing heat because they hated blacks and feared for their lives after the War.

Buttrick argues that before the “Civil War,” Americans did not really own firearms. They were more ornamental pieces to hang over the fireplace or to control rodents.

Only after all of the bloodletting of the 1860s and the racism of Southern society in postbellum America did “gun culture” become an important part of American society.

This piece was stupid from the title onward.

Buttrick is a psychology professor who doesn’t know or understand American history.

In fact, the basis of his entire premise is a book that has been debunked not only by his straw man gun toting right wingnut who uses dog whistles to call to other racists, but left wing academics who ripped apart the entire narrative.

The funniest part? Buttrick cites an essay that blows apart his thesis as evidentiary support.

You can’t make up Buttrick’s kind of stupid.

The attempt to blame the South for everything leftists consider “evil” in America is common in the academy.

It’s also embarrassing and intellectually dishonest.

I discuss Buttrick on Episode 739 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Allen Guelzo is perhaps my least favorite establishment historian.

That’s saying something.

Conservatives love him. He has a great radio or documentary voice and speaks with authority. He is intelligent and holds the right views on a number of issues.

But “conservatives” like Guelzo have a fatal flaw that will always result in enhancing the left.

They can’t help but praise Lincoln and a “nationalist” vision of America.

And for Guelzo and these “conservatives,” the Gettysburg Address is like God giving Moses the Ten Commandments.

It has become American scripture.

Consider a recent piece at the Wall Street Journal.

Guelzo even compares it to some type of religious document, something too grand for mortal eyes to see at the time but through careful study we can now find its brilliance.

It was terrible then and it is terrible now, a shabby piece of historical claptrap that meant nothing.

I produced this video on the Gettysburg Address a few years ago, and I have a class at McClanahan Academy on the Declaration (click the link below for 30% off). They are a double barrelled assault on Guelzo’s fake history.

But I also thought it presented a great opportunity for a Podcast, so I discuss Guelzo’s Gettysburg Address on Episode 738 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

For weeks, I was relatively skeptical about Republican chances for success in the 2022 election.

I blasted Oz and Hershel Walker as bad candidates and argued that the Grand Old Stupid Party would mess up a golden opportunity to gain control of the Congress.

Then I bought the polling numbers leading into November 8 and predicted that the Republicans would have a 54-46 seat majority in the Senate and win around 40 seats in the House.

That would have been a red wave. I should have known the Grand Old Stupid Party would mess it up.

They did.

The Republicans will still gain control of the House, which of course could lead to great political theater. They should be hell bent on political grandstanding like the Democrats over the last four years.

But when you trust Republicans to do the right thing, you’ll always be disappointed.

Just look at their “agenda,” the “Commitment to America”, a thinly veiled rip-off of 1994’s “Contract with America.”

It’s light on content and even lighter on trust.

How do I know this? The “Commitment” vows to end proxy voting, just like the “Contract” vowed to end proxy voting.

Fool me once, fool me twice….

This is why voting Republican at the “national” level will never get Americans anywhere. It’s also why I use “think locally, act locally.”

If you really want election reform, immigration reform, or any other real reform, it needs to happen at the State and local level.

We should be putting all of our energy into State and local elections. If we had real election laws in most States, the Democrats would be doomed.

That would be as simple as banning most mail-in voting.

State races should be more important than what happens in Washington.

If the past two years have proven anything, it’s that the States do have the power to stand up to the general government–and when you have real election laws, Republicans easily win.

Our messianic worship of “democracy” for the lowest common denominator (even Kamala Harris calls college students stupid) produces the dopey political class and the corruption in the center.

More decentralization means a better America.

I discuss the “red ripple” on Episode 737 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Did you end democracy today?

Yesterday I wrote that the founding generation may have reconsidered their support for “democracy” if they could see the current state of American politics.

But then again, maybe not.

In colonial Virginia, it was commonplace to provide potential voters with rum, beer, whiskey, ginger cakes, and other assorted goodies, perhaps even free lodging on the night before the election.

A good barbecue was always welcomed by voters.

Nothing like roasted pig and a draft beer to get you to vote.

And forget the secret ballot. You can to openly show your support.

The swill and pork was not only well received, it was expected.

When Little Jemmy Madison wanted to rein-in some of this election hootenanny, the voters turned him down.

The House of Burgesses booted him out for being too much of a prude.

George Washington’s papers include detailed receipts for food and grog on election day.

Maybe this would be better than the stupid “I Voted” sticker everyone runs around with today.

If your belly was fat and you stumbled from the polls, everyone knew you voted in 1758.

Election “fraud” was commonplace in American history. It still is. And just like in 1758, voters know it happens. The left isn’t even trying to hide it any longer.

“Broken” voting machines are now the rage at majority Democrat polling locations.

You have to find the votes you need to win. Don’t worry about those real voting results. They’ll find the votes they need once polling closes and ballots are taken to another location for “counting.”

The left will only concede when it’s clear they had no shot.

If most people knew how crooked American elections have been, they wouldn’t have so much faith in the power of voting.

I discuss “Rum, Ginger Cakes, and Elections” on Episode 734 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

We are in the home stretch of the most important election of our lifetimes.

This one just surpasses the 2020 election, which was the next most important election of our lifetime.

That election was slightly more important than the 2018 election, which was only a bit more important than the 2016 election.

And if we don’t vote tomorrow, democracy dies. So do your children and all the people you love if Republicans win back control of the Congress.

Why? Because Hitler.

If you could take a recording of the stupid things people say about modern elections to the founding generation and play it for them, I would guess they wouldn’t be so enamored with “democracy.”

Or maybe they would. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

But for today, let us take a moment and realize that the most important issue, at least according to President Brandon, is the preservation of our “democracy”.

Not inflation. Not foreign policy. Not jobs.

Nope. We need to worry about right-wing extremism.

He doubled down on his Dark Brandon speech with an equally stupid offering last week.

I am at a loss to figure out how these progressive dopes even function on a daily basis.

Inflation has sustained a double digit assault on the cost of living for months, and Brandon and his foolish minions are running around worrying about a bogeyman called right-wing violence?

This is gaslighting at its finest. The most destructive force in Western Civilization has been left-wing political violence.

Not right wing.

And these petty little progressive fascists–and they are fascists–are lecturing Americans about the threat of violence while many Americans can’t afford gas or milk?

There’s a reason these fools are going to get wiped out tomorrow.

But Republicans should proceed with caution. It’s easy taking shots when you aren’t in power, and while Americans might reward the Grand Old Stupid Party tomorrow, we have to remember that Republicans were fine with printing 6 trillion dollars out of thin air during the “pandemic.”

A few warned against it. Most did not.

Either way, Brandon’s speech to “save democracy” from MAGA extremism is so delusional only a leftist historian could have written it. We’re still waiting to find out which one.

My money is on Michael Beschloss.

Their hyperbole is buttressed by Civil Rights LARPers who really wish they could have marched with King in the 1960s.

Except early voting is up. Kind of hard to promote voter suppression conspiracy theories when more people have voted before this election than the last one.

They’ll still try.

Brandon’s speech did make for great Podcast fodder. I discuss it on Episode 733 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

On Monday, I wrote about an article by Lafayette Lee that defined “patriotism” as a defense of people and place, not some ideological commitment to “natural rights” or some mythical founding expressed by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address.

Predictably, Straussian Glenn Ellmers found fault with it.

You see, if you take on St. Abraham, the Straussians are going to lose their minds.

How dare you claim that the Lincoln Myth isn’t the real America?

Ellmers condescendingly wagged his finger at Lee, and insisted that he get on board with Straussian mythmaking or lose his conservative man card.

I would say the same thing to Glenn Ellmers.

Why should we, the real conservatives, jump on the Lincoln myth?

We shouldn’t, particularly when that myth is built on a fairy tale.

Ellmers and the Jaffaite Straussians should be joining our side, that is if they were real conservatives and not just discarded nineteenth century leftists.

To Ellmers, the Founding Fathers all believed in the “proposition” that all men are created equal and forged a government based on that Enlightenment theory.

Except they didn’t. Actions speak louder than words, and while many Northern States began the process of abolishing slavery in the late 18th century, they certainly weren’t committed to racial equality. But they were committed to keeping the North white.

So much for natural rights and “equality.”

The Straussians’ major flaw–other than being historical ignoramuses–is that they think they get to decide when “equality” stops. In other words, equality should go to point B and no further. But the Left insists on taking it to point Z, and why not? There is nothing to stop them. Equality is a loaded term, and why would a bunch of book worms get to decide when we’ve achieved the goal of full equality?

The Revolution is always going forward, even when the guillotine stops lopping off heads.

I know a lot of conservatives have jumped on the Struassian bandwagon after they supported Trump in 2016. They have also embraced “nationalism” as a counterweight to “globalism.” I get emails from these people all the time.

But what kind of “nationalism”? Are Southern conservatives invited to this party? Not unless they repent and join the Lincoln mythmakers in their quest to achieved proposition nation glory.

No thanks.

You see, the cultural divide in America is real, and it’s not based on race. Instead of Hectoring to Southern conservatives about how they should drop any reverence for John C. Calhoun, perhaps the Straussians could figure out why men like Russell Kirk admired the man and why he thought Southern conservatism was so important for the United States.

That might be too much to ask for these worn out leftists disguised as “conservatives.”

But it does make for good Podcast fodder. I take down Ellmers on Episode 730 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

I’ve long said that the real problem for American conservatism isn’t the left. They are predictable.

No, the real issue for a truly conservative American political movement are so-called American conservatives that cling to the Lincolnian Myth of the American founding.

You can’t spell conservative with 19th century radicalism.

R.L. Dabney pointed this out in the late 19th century.

The 19th century Republican Party never considered itself to be conservative. In fact, they argued the exact opposite.

Lincoln and others may have waxed poetic about the “proposition nation” myth, but that argument had been thoroughly rebuked by the same caliber (or better) of moral, religious,and political leaders in the South, and for that matter the question of “equality” which so vexed the Western world was still being debated across the West in the 19th century.

America was not unique in this process.

The conservative principles of America, best expressed as a dedication to people and place, what Lafayette Lee describes as “patriotism” in this piece, should be the bedrock of a modern American conservative party.

This is why George Wallace irritated men like William F. Buckley. Wallace did not fit the New England definition of a “conservative,” someone dedicated through ideology to “capitalism” and government restraint on all levels.

Wallace, though, called himself a conservative even while promoting public education and welfare programs in Alabama. He never insisted they needed to be applied to the entire United States.

That is federalism, one of the key hallmarks of American conservatism. As John C. Calhoun said, “I am a conservative, and because I am a conservative, I am a State’s rights man.”

American nationalism is inconsistent with American conservatism.

You have to have a base culture for that to work, and very few Americans in the first two hundred and fifty years of the American experience believed that a monolithic American culture exited.

They were right.

I discuss Lee’s piece and American conservatism on Episode 729 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

The Lincoln myth is never going away.

Why? Because people on both the “left” and “right” subscribe to it, so much so that Lincoln is the only person capable of saving democracy.

At least that is what Jon Meacham argued in a recent piece at Time magazine.

This is almost psychopathy.

Meacham thinks Joe Biden needs to take a page from “Honest Abe” and use his power to ward off anti-democratic forces in America.

Just like Lincoln did.

Let’s just skip the fact that Lincoln never favored “government of the people by the people and for the people.” If he did, he would have let the South go in peace.

In order for Lincoln to “save democracy” he launched a war that killed a million people, maybe more when civilian deaths due to disease, dislocation, and starvation are added to the tally.

Sounds like a grand plan.

To Meacham and other Lincoln worshipers, the cost was worth it.

Imagine thinking anything is worth a million deaths.

But what about slavery? What about democracy?

We know that every other western power in the world ended slavery peacefully. It might have taken some time in the United States–and Lincoln himself was willing to wait until the 1920s–but it would have happened.

Regardless, Meacham’s piece made for great Podcast fodder. I discuss it on Episode 727 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Eric Foner thinks “presentism” is a pretty good idea.

Of course, because “presentism” undergirds Foner’s scholarship.

In a recent review of a new book about C. Vann Woodward, Foner concludes that Woodward’s “presentism” helped bring attention to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

You see, to Foner, historical activism in the name of a good cause isn’t really “presentism,” it’s reality.

But is that what Woodward was really doing?

Woodward was a leftist in his lifetime, and his Strange Career of Jim Crow–the book Foner focuses on in his review–was certainly an important intellectual treatise against State segregation.

But in contrast to how Foner tells the tale, the book is not so much a result of “presentism” but an attempt to understand the present (1950s) through a stream of history. Woodward does not shy away from pointing the finger at the North for the origins of Jim Crow. He does not condemn or denounce the South. On the contrary, he is rather sympathetic, and even argues the race relations were never the defining element of Southern politics or history, but a mere result of larger determining factors.

That doesn’t stop Foner from arguing that Woodward was, in fact, a presentist.

By using Woodward as an example, Foner is trying to attach his type of historical activism to past efforts. I don’t think the parallels exist.

Foner is a communist with a clear agenda to remake America. Woodward was a Beardian who sought to understand his native region in light of massive change, change he agreed with for the most part, but change nevertheless.

Foner encourages revolution while ignoring the collateral damage.

Woodward laments the collateral damage while thinking some change was necessary and just.

Modern presentists are ideologues without grounding. Woodward, even in Connecticut, was a Southern man who loved his region regardless of the faults.

Woodward was not right about many aspects of Southern history, but I would take Woodward over Foner any day of the week.

I discuss Foner and Woodward on Episode 726 of The Brion McClanahan Show.