Last week, The New York Times ran an article that exemplifies the current Constitutional ignorance in the United States.

While the article was ostensibly about the “independent state legislature doctrine,” the subtitle grabbed my attention:

“Races in state legislatures are often quiet and turn on local issues like roads or schools. But a Supreme Court case could give these legislative bodies nearly absolute power over federal elections.”

You see, to the dope who wrote the piece, State and local elections should only be about things like roads and schools and not about anything else.

He worries that the States may have a real role in federal elections, something the founding generation insisted be part of the Constitution.

Granted, State and local governments should be worried about roads and schools–the general government should not–but the States have always been the foundation that holds the entire system together.

And they have all the power.

To this journalist, issues like “voting laws, abortion access, gun policy, public health, education and other issues dominating the lives of Americans” should really be handled by Congress, but since they are “deadlocked”, nothing gets done, meaning the States have to step in and fill the void.

Do you spot the problem?

We’ve imbued so much of the Lincoln myth, that if everything isn’t “nationalized” we think the system is broken when the reality is the opposite.

The States are righting the ship.

I have a dream that one day people will be thinking locally and acting locally so often that they won’t notice or care who is in Washington D.C., that is unless they keep shipping billions to other countries in “foreign aid.”

But you know what? If Congress and the general government were so constrained by the Constitution, they wouldn’t have the money to ship off nor would they be able to hide from their required duties by holding mock trials for political impact.

I thought this piece deserved an episode of The Brion McClanahan Show.

For years, academics have argued that Lincoln and the Republicans maintained the Constitution during the War. This is the common tripe from Straussians and their righteous cause myth allies.

But what if those who argued Lincoln shredded the Constitution have been correct the entire time.

What if “originalism” has been the proper way to interpret the Constitution as ratified by the founding generation?

What if Lincoln led a revolution rather than a restoration?

If that is the case, then the current Constitution is not the original Constitution and any argument referencing the document is a dead letter.

As Noah Feldman argues in his new book, The Broken Constitution, Lincoln recreated the document during the War.

In other words, as Charles Beard argued in the early 20th century, we had a second American revolution.

This actually works well for the left. Eric Foner’s “unfinished revolution” needs to be finished, and if the original Constitution cannot be used to resist federal power, then the transformation from a federal republic to a national government is complete.

The left needs the 14th Amendment for this process to work, which is why they have focused so much scholarly attention on that Amendment the last several years.

I discuss Feldman’s epiphany on Episode 724 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Last week, I discussed Justice Jackson’s “progressive originalism.” This led to an email asking if I denied that such a thing existed.

It was easier to make an episode of The Brion McClanahan Show then respond directly, and it also allowed me to review a book that has created quite a stir in the “libertarian community,” Randy Barnett’s The Original Meaning of the 14th Amendment.

So-called “progressive originalism” is based entirely on that Amendment to the Constitution.

There are problems with Barnett’s book, most importantly that “progressive originalism” sounds a lot more like “textualism” than “originalism.”

The two are not the same.

Barnett admits that the way we interpret the 14th Amendment today was not the way the authors and ratifiers of the Amendment interpreted it.

It allowed for an expansion of “civil rights.”

That is not originalism. The author of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, on which the 14th Amendment is based, argued that the definition of civil rights was clearly spelled out in a 19th century legal dictionary titled Bouvier’s Law Dictionary. You cannot defend our modern interpretation of civil rights from that text. Here it is, in full:

8. Civil rights are those which have no relation to the establishment, support, or management of the government. These consist in the power of acquiring and enjoying property, of exercising the paternal and marital powers, and the like. It will be observed that every one, unless deprived of them by a sentence of civil death, is in the enjoyment of his civil rights, which is not the case with political rights; for an alien, for example, has no political, although in the full enjoyment of his civil rights.

9. These latter rights are divided into absolute and relative. The absolute rights of mankind may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security, which consists in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation; the right of personal liberty, which consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s inclination may direct, without any restraint, unless by due course of law; the right of property, which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land. 1 Bl. 124 to 139.

10. The relative rights are public or private: the first are those which subsist between the people and the government, as the right of protection on the part of the people, and the right of allegiance which is due by the people to the government; the second are the reciprocal rights of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, and master and servant.

Notice that “property” is referenced several times. That was the clear aim of Republican civil rights legislation in the 1860s and the 14th Amendment. Former slaves needed to be secure in their property, i.e. the ability to sue in court.

Political rights are not listed, nor are the vast “rights” conferred upon various groups today.

In order to agree with Barnett’s strained interpretation of originalism, you would have to redefine the term.

Barnett concludes the book with a ringing endorsement of the Lincoln Myth of American history. That, more than anything, is the book’s primary purpose.

This finds common ground with Straussian “equality as a conservative.” If “originalism” can be redefined by a poor interpretation of the 14th Amendment, then “originalists” cannot be considered racist or any other pejorative.

You see, they then believe in the Recreated United States of the 1860s, not the one that preceded the War.

The argument fails from the beginning, but it required an in depth discussion, Episode 723.

I’ve received several emails over the years asking me to explain what I mean by the “Straussians.”

With the theme of “myths” this week, I thought it was a good time to go into more detail.

The Straussians are a particular type of American conservative based on the teachings of Leo Strauss through perhaps his most important student, Harry Jaffa.

Jaffa became somewhat of a star in the post-World War II conservative movement when he began challenging traditional American conservatives on the War, Lincoln, and the ambiguous term “equality.”

While never directly stating this as his primary motive, it became clear that Jaffa and other “conservatives” worried that American conservatism was intertwined with segregation, racism, and the ghosts of slavery, and thus mainstream Americans would consistently reject traditional conservatives once the Civil Rights Movement had become ingrained in American society.

Nixon may have won with a “Southern strategy” designed to blunt the influence of someone like George Wallace, a man William Buckley hated calling a “conservative”, but the Civil Rights movement had also helped produce Kennedy and Johnson and the Leftist “treasury of virtue.”

To Jaffa, Lincoln offered a rebuttal to this charge. You see, if Lincoln was a conservative–and Jaffa thought he was–and if the War had been fought against racism and slavery–and Jaffa thought it had–and if Lincoln believed in the “proposition that all men are created equal”–and the Gettysburg Address showed that he did–then American “conservatism” was based on an idea, born in the Declaration, defended by blood by Union soldiers and codified in November 1863 at Gettysburg.

Every event leading to civil rights was then a “conservative” reaction to a distortion of the “idea” of America.

Jaffa’s fairy tale, and it was just that, was based on ideology. Jaffa was a brilliant man always willing to engage in intellectual debates, but like Strauss he was an ideologue wrestling with tangible history that did not fit his narrative. The two are incompatible.

More than anything, Jaffa and his students (the Claremont Institute in California) now have an oversized influence on the direction of “conservatism” and it’s public image. It’s clear why. Jaffa took the sting out of being a conservative by allowing his students to point fingers at the antithesis of American history–the South–while feigning the moral high ground.

The one major problem with this interpretation is that the Left never really bought it.

They knew Lincoln was not a conservative and that the Civil Rights Movement was anything but conservative, even if radicals considered its initial aims to be less than acceptable or Martin Luther King, Jr. to be too soft of a spokesman.

King was never confused for a conservative in his time, but today, the Straussians like to lump him into a Lincolnian crusade to remake America in the supposed vision of the founding generation. If Honest Abe was a conservative, so was King.

I say supposed because the proposition nation was explicitly rejected even in the 18th century by many Americans, North and South, particularly after the horrors of the French Revolution, and in the 19th century after the Haitian rebellion. Barry Shain has conclusively proven this in his monumental The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context.

Jaffa and the Straussians have entrenched the Lincoln Myth in American conservatism, which is why we need to understand their faulty arguments.

American history is full of myths. The most conspicuous and derided is the “Myth of the Lost Cause.”

Most people don’t know what the so-called “Lost Cause” meant, but they think it means people who argue that slavery wasn’t important in the antebellum period or as a contributing factor to the “Civil War.”

All they know is that only “neo-Confederate”, racist, uneducated dopes believe in it.

Except we know that isn’t true or that the “Myth of the Lost Cause” is the most pernicious in our understanding of the past.

I wouldn’t call the “Lost Cause” pernicious, but those who spend much of their time as keyboard warriors fighting against this bogeyman do.

No. Pernicious American myths center around one figure: Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincolnian Myth drives most of our understanding of the American past.

Take for example this piece by historian Wilfred McClay. He points to several myths of American history, but does not identify the root of each myth, Lincoln.

Both the Left and the Right claim Lincoln and the Lincoln myth as their own, a phenomenon I will be discussing this week on The Brion McClanahan Show.

For the Left, Lincoln represents all that is potentially good in America, we, of course, have fallen short of that proposition.

For the Right, Lincoln embodies the ideal America, from politics to his treatment of executive powers, to his positions on “democracy” and slavery.

Both positions are based on myths, even more fantastic than that of the “Lost Cause.”

That myth was at least based on the established political traditions of the United States. In other words, it was a concrete “myth” of heroic people fighting to preserve self-government and self-determination against an ideology.

McClay’s essay offers a great starting point for a week on myths at the Brion McClanahan Show, and it begins with Episode 721.

Several people sent me a link to a recent Atlantic article tilted, “The United States of Confederate America.”

I had to cover it on The Brion McClanahan Show.

The piece is an example of the absolute disdain the progressive left has for rural America, specifically white, high-school educated, middle and lower middle class Americas. These are the “deplorables,” the rural Americans that cling to their God and guns.

And you know what really bothers these leftist dopes? They like Confederate symbols.

Of course this means they are racist. And sexist. And anti-Semitic. And worst of all, stupid.

How could an American in Pennsylvania who possibly had Union veteran ancestors fly a Confederate flag? Or in Michigan? Or North California?

Because these people know what our leftist snowflake writer does not. Confederate flags represent defiance to the American establishment regime. They are a pure Jeffersonian symbol of the original principles of the federal republic, namely self-determination and government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

A few years ago, a listener told me about a visit by some Chinese businessmen to Dallas in the 1980s. They didn’t want to see where JFK was shot. They wanted to see the Robert E. Lee monument. Again, Lee represents a big middle finger to the woke, totalitarian, centralizers in Washington D.C.

Everyone in the world knows it.

It also shows that Americans really love Southern culture, it’s music, food, fashion, and accent.

No one calls Boston to hear a Yankee talk on the phone, but they sure will get a Southern lady to keep talking to them.

There’s no better accent in the world.

And people want to be Southern. This is why Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Dukes of Hazzard were so popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

As Hank Williams, Jr. said, “The New South, thank God, is still the same.” And still has room to grow.

I discuss this ridiculous piece on episode 720 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Language matters.

The descriptive words we use define our principles and positions.

Terms like “rebel” and “neo-confederate” have always been sneers by a supposedly morally righteous individual untainted by “treason” or “slavery”.

All four of those words are meaningless in current discourse.

The same can be said for “federalist” and “anti-federalist”. The perversion of the former and the creation of the latter has led to a distorted view of early American history.

We know the culture war is about the use of language to gain power, to force the obedient to genuflect to their new woke masters.

The suppression of free speech is one of the more dangerous components of the progressive left.

They have been doing it since the French Revolution.

Jeff Deist wrote a wonderful piece on this topic last week. Deist is the President of the Mises Institute. If you are not familiar with their work, you should go here.

Orwell famously wrote about the problems of distorting language and how it could be used for totalitarian purposes. But with fewer Americans interested in reading anything other than Twitter or spending time on Tic Toc, our functional illiteracy has led to willing dupes in society.

As Jefferson once wrote, “A nation that expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization expects what never was and what never will be.”

Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also dangerous when people vote.

No worries, though. As Queen Obama told a crowd a few years ago, even if you “know nothing about nothing”, you should still vote.

Democracy is on the line. And we have stupid leftist professors laying awake at night worrying about it. By the way, read the replies. It’s pure lunacy.

Deist’s piece was great Podcast fodder, so I discuss it on episode 719 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

The “Naming Commission” has spoken and the Secretary of Defense has signed off on it’s proposals.

Unless something happens, the Confederate Monument in Arlington Cemetery will be unrecognizable once they are through with it.

It will simply be a block of granite.

This is the future of America. Beauty is gone, only communist “equity” will remain. Take a look at those wonderful communist apartments in the former Soviet Union. That is our future.

In the meantime, the United States Army complains that it is facing a “personpower” problem.

I say “personpower” because the woke military has completely rotted out the efficacy of the American military.

Everything is woke. I’ve heard from a number of my former military listeners that the vast majority of soldiers are fed up with the indoctrination and are leaving as fast as they can. They are also telling their friends and family not to enlist.

Why should they?

Is fighting for the regime in some far flung war patriotism?

Nope, and they know it. This is much like the final days of the Roman Empire. The Romans had become so decedent that they stopped joining the army. The Germans gladly filled the void and eventually, Rome fell.

In this case, Americans–and a large percentage of Southerners–would join up, but they can’t see fighting for a government and society that no longer respects them.

Good luck finding enough leftists to fill out your ranks.

I discuss the Arlington monument and the recruiting problem on episode 718 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

According to the establishment, new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “schooled” the rest of America on the 14th Amendment last week.

Slate called this “progressive originalism.”

But did she really “school” anyone on anything?

Hardly.

Justice Jackson supposedly took the Alabama Solicitor General to task for insisting that the 14th Amendment and the Constitution are “race blind.”

She correctly asserted that the 1866 Civil Rights Act directly reference race as a determining factor in enforcement. Same for the 14th Amendment, at least in part.

She read the text from both documents along with work from the committee that drafted the act in 1866 to support her claims.

But she omitted what the author of the bill said about it during the debates over its passage, namely that “civil rights” only extended to access to courts and the protection of property.

If you listened to Judge Jackson, you would think these 1866 Republicans favored modern conceptions of civil rights.

They also made clear that “political” rights were not covered by either bill.

In other words, she failed in her attempt to “school” anyone.

But of course, this laughable attempt at “originalism” was great Podcast fodder. i cover it on episode 717 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

In 1978, Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina appeared on William Buckley’s “Firing Line.”

The two had a memorable exchange about “backbone:”

SJE: “Frankly, I think the big trouble in public life is there are too many people in public life with the anatomy of the jellyfish. They haven’t got much backbone, and I think they need more backbone in government …”

WFB: “You think they should hang tough?”

SJE: “Well, I think they ought to get a backbone some way instead of being so much like jellyfish.”

WFB: “Like Gordon Liddy?”

SJE: “Well, Gordon Liddy has a little too much backbone. I’ll have to admit that I have a sort of sneaking admiration for a fellow like Gordon Liddy that does have an excess of backbone. His backbone exceeds his intelligence, really.”

Buckley tried to deflect what Ervin was saying. Ervin thought and argued throughout his career that too many people in Washington D.C. ignored the Constitution, including Richard Nixon.

That started as soon as he assumed office in 1955. For the next twenty years, Senator Sam fought against the consistent “shredding of the Constitution.”

The problem was that the progressive left and right never called it that.

They do now, openly.

In fact, they insist that the only way to save the Constitution is to shred the Constitution. It doesn’t work because it ties the hands of the central government and gives too much power to minorities, also known as “conservatives”, in small States.

You read that right. The progressive left wants to hammer political minorities.

As an aside, funny how the left never complains about Vermont, or Delaware, or Rhode Island, as having too much influence in the Senate. Only Wyoming. I wonder why?

We’ve all known this, but now that the progressive left is losing, at least sometimes, they are trying to figure out a way to openly game the system.

I would argue they’ve been doing this for over 100 years.

It’s always been open season on the Constitution, and most honest people recognized that fact.

Progressives just thought they were abiding by the document because the federal court system told them they were through several bad decisions.

This made for good podcast fodder, so I discuss it on episode 714 of The Brion McClanahan Show.