You can’t keep the Struassians down. In fact, they want to define what it means to be a “conservative,” and they might just be successful, unfortunately.

This doesn’t mean I don’t agree with them on several issues.

But their insistence on “national conservatism” presents major problems, not the least of which is their entire “nationalist” worldview.

Calhoun said he was a “conservative” because he was a “State’s Rights” man. That is the essence of American conservatism.

Everything else–political, economic, cultural–flows from there.

You see, Calhoun called the American political system “beautiful.” And he did so because of its peculiarities, meaning its uniqueness.

No system like it had been developed in the Western world.

The Straussians want to supplant this beautiful peculiar system for the European “nation state.” They call that “conservative.”

They insist they favor a federal system, but insist upon using force to ensure that renegade States comply with their “national” agenda.

Calhoun would not agree, and there was a time that Calhoun was considered to be one of the most important conservative voices in American history.

The culture war can be won (and better waged) at the State level. Ron DeSantis proves that.

You don’t need some Puritanical “city upon a hill” “conservative nationalism” to ensure the left goes down in flames.

But you also have to accept that California will be California. So long as we don’t California Alabama I’m fine with that.

You should be, too.

We can’t win in Washington D.C., but we can win in Tallahassee or Montgomery or even Sacramento if people get enough of leftist lunacy.

I discuss this latest conservative manifesto on episode 652 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Every so often, Victor Davis Hanson writes a piece that gets a few things right.

Take for example his recent effort at American Greatness, “The Sovietization of American Life.”

Hanson describes the wholesale destruction of traditional American society as a byproduct of the Marxist drift of American culture over the last half century.

What he doesn’t get is that his hero Abraham Lincoln was partly responsible for this.

Consider that Hanson gleefully accepted the removal of Confederate symbols in 2015.

He also defended Sherman’s destructive plundering during his “March to the Sea.”

And he now wants to lecture about cancel culture and woke insanity.

This is why I continue to quibble with these “conservatives.” Their response to the stupid move to take down Confederate symbols in 2015 should have been, “No, shut up.” Just as it should be today.

You see, the modern American Left would not have it’s intellectual ammunition without Lincoln’s–and 19th century Republican–distortion of “all men are created equal.”

Hanson’s love affair with the proposition nation has led to an emasculated “conservative” opposition in America.

We all know, even the dopes on the Left, that no one is created equal to anyone else.

We also know that no culture or society is equal to another, and judging by history, no civilization has produced a greater good for humanity than the West.

It is also committing suicide as we speak, due in large part to its own success and the willingness of “conservatives” to buy into leftist dogma.

You can’t conserve anything if you are always moving the goal post.

I go back to Calhoun’s definition of “conservative.” He said he was a conservative because he was a “State’s Rights” man. Federalism, real decentralization, is the heart of American conservatism.

Hanson can’t seem to get it. He won’t until he drops the Lincolnian nationalism at the heart of his political philosophy.

Regardless, his essay made for good podcast fodder, so I discuss it on episode 649 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

A lot of people on the right are banking on a “red wave” this November to turn the tide of American politics.

Uncle Joe’s approval ratings are tanking, and the Democrats don’t seem to have a clue about what is causing the worst inflation since the 1970s.

Americans are tired of the culture war, tired of woke stupidity, tired of mental illness being called normal, and tired of one-size fits all government policies that usually don’t work.

But the problem, as Paul Gottfried points out, is that the Democrats control large sections of the American electorate, and they can always resort to cheating if they need an extra boost.

Washington D.C. is lost. It should stay lost. This is why I have been preaching think locally, act locally, for years.

Take for example recent elections in California. That State seemed lost, but the idiot leftist DA in San Francisco has been recalled, and the people of LA seemed to be primed to rid themselves of their massive homeless problem by electing someone who promises to clean up the streets.

Americans typically don’t vote for progressive policies once they are implemented.

That is what the federal courts are for, but more on that tomorrow.

You need to get involved in local elections. That is the only way to stem the tide of woke insanity. And your vote matters. My State Senate primary was decided by one vote last week. One vote out of 10,000 ballots. Amazing.

The “national” red wave would be unnecessary if local and State governments just took the bull by the horns and said, “Enough.”

School board races matter. City council seats matter. State offices matter. As Ron DeSantis has shown, the most powerful politicians in America are governors. This isn’t by accident.

I discuss Gottfried’s article and the “red wave” on episode 647 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

If you listen to progressives, “originalism” is nothing more than a crackpot conservative way to discriminate against minorities through “bad” court decisions.

Or maybe it’s just to overturn what they consider to be “good” court decisions.

Either way, the fear is that conservatives will scrap their ability to legislate from the bench.

Most progressives believe that “originalism” wasn’t an intellectual movement until the 1980s.

But what if “originalism” was at the heart of the American War for Independence?

You see, the men fighting for independence began talking about unconstitutional acts of Parliament as early as 1764. Their arguments sounded a lot like modern originalism.

The British had a constitution and the Parliament continually violated it. That, more than anything else, led to the final break in 1776.

It wasn’t about John Locke or Enlightenment theory, or the proposition that all men are created equal.

It was about unconstitutional government. That places the entirety of American history in a different context. If the founding generation was willing to seek independence over excessive unconstitutional government–and by excessive I mean violations that were far less dangerous than those we suffer through today–what does that mean for modern America?

And if “originalism” formed the basis of the American experience, then progressives are the people living in a fantasy world that only exists through their clear deceptions and constitutional machinations.

The only way they win is by keeping the real history of American wrapped in ideological garbage.

I discuss the problem on episode 645 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

A listener asked if I thought Ron DeSantis was wrong about Alexander Hamilton.

Most people are wrong about Alexander Hamilton, particularly those who consider him to be the most important American in the founding generation.

He was certainly driven, intelligent, and patriotic, but he was also a duplicitous liar who laid the foundation for the destruction of the federal republic established during the American War for Independence.

September 11, 1789 is the original terrible September 11. That was the day Hamilton became Secretary of the Treasury.

Regardless, DeSantis thinks Hamilton would be appalled by the Florida Constitution. Why? Because it limits the executive, and Hamilton favored an energetic executive branch.

Like most Americans, DeSantis confuses what Hamilton or other Founders said about the Constitution of the general government and that of the State governments.

Hamilton did not like the strong executive of George Clinton in New York, and James Madison, whom DeSantis also admires, wanted the Constitution because it would limit the power of Patrick Henry in Virginia.

In other words, both were suspicious of strong governors in their respective States, the same position DeSantis occupies in Florida.

Which brings me to my point about DeSantis. Be careful what you wish for with a President DeSantis. We know almost nothing about his views on foreign policy, the most important job of the president, and while we can cheer is attack on the woke idiots in Florida, he would have less power to do so in Washington than Tallahassee.

DeSantis would be better off keeping Florida great than making American great again.

But this made for a great podcast, so I discuss it on episode 644 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Yesterday was Memorial Day. Most Americans don’t know three facts about the holiday:

1. It originated in the South to honor Confederate (and Union) dead.

2. The day became an officially recognized holiday because GAR commander John Logan copied the Southern event in 1868.

3. John Logan helped push through the legislation that prohibited blacks from living in Illinois in 1853.

In other words, the man who wanted a “Union” decoration day was a notorious racist before the War.

John Logan has two monuments in his honor, one in Washington D.C., the other in Chicago.

I wonder when the woke social justice warriors are going to demand the destruction of his monument. After all, we’ve been told that monuments to “white supremacists” need to be removed.

Or how about the Lincoln Memorial. Yesterday also marked the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Memorial.

Lincoln infamously stated he considered whites to be superior to blacks and never advocated racial equality.

Again, when are the wrecked balls going to be taken to the Lincoln Memorial?

I won’t hold my breath. The real reason Confederate monuments have been destroyed has nothing to do with race. They are the low hanging fruit in the culture war and distract from the real failures of stupid leftist governments.

Don’t you know, New Orleans is a modern dump because of Lee Circle?

Richmond can’t keep clamp down on crime because of Monument Avenue. I’m sure the statistics are going to reflect this.

The stupidity and hypocrisy of these woke losers would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad, and if well meaning Americans weren’t so easily duped.

I discuss the Logan monuments and the Lincoln Memorial on episode 642 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is clearly a “neo-Confederate.” Why? Because she had the audacity to claim that the War wasn’t fought to end slavery.

Gasp!

You can almost hear the head of every righteous cause mythologist exploding.

How dare this faux historian/journalist claim that the War was not about slavery. And she not only said it, she TRIPLED DOWN on the assertion, meaning she really believes it.

Good. I have been arguing since last year that Nikole Hannah-Jones makes “conservatives” uncomfortable because if she is correct about the “idea” of America, then their entire identity is tied to 19th century leftism, meaning they aren’t really conservative.

They don’t want to hear it, but it’s true.

Lincoln wasn’t a conservative. Neither was Seward, Sumner, Stevens, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, U.S. Grant, or anyone else they want to label as “conservative.”

It’s an embarrassment.

The same is true for Martin Luther King. But you see, politics trumps intelligence and truth. This is why American conservatives have abandoned Calhoun and embraced King. We might as well be singing the Soviet national anthem and voting for crazy Bernie Sanders.

We’ll get there eventually.

Hannah-Jones didn’t say anything most Americans would not have agreed with just a couple of decades ago, but now to merely suggest that our glorious boys in blue did not fight to free slaves, establish women’s suffrage, embrace LGTBQ+ equity, end world hunger, provide free medial care, spread liberty and democracy across the globe, and stamp out white supremacy wherever it exists makes you a “neo-Confederate.”

If America was founded on the “proposition” that “all men are created equal,” then Hannah-Jones is correct to question the commitment to that proposition.

Yet, if America wasn’t “founded” on that “idea”–and it wasn’t–then we can move along and start discussing the real issue that has plagued the United States since 1789: unconstitutional federal power.

That problem underlies every issue in American history, from executive overreach to massive spending to the culture war. No one in Washington D.C. should be talking about gay marriage, abortion, stimulus checks, gun control, the death penalty, or free college tuition.

These are purely State issues and should have remained so.

But once you consolidate and create a “majoritarian democracy” that has unlimited power, every issue must fall under the federal head, and thus we get the very monster the majority of the founding generation feared.

The Constitution would not have been ratified had the founding generation believed they were getting a central government with the ability to negate State laws with an elected king able to rule by decree.

We can thank Straussian “conservative heroes” like Lincoln for that.

I discuss Hannah-Jones and her War revelation on episode 640 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

The left wants more “democracy.” You see, they think more “democracy” means better government.

But what does that term mean, and more importantly, what if more “democracy” meant worse government?

Calhoun certainly thought it would lead to that, but you have to understand how he defined “democracy.”

To most eighteenth century Europeans–democracy didn’t exist anywhere else–democracy was the opposite of hereditary aristocracy and monarchy. In other words, it wasn’t just the rule of the man, it was the antithesis of rule of one based on a hereditary order.

Democracy had layers. You could have direct democracy or representative democracy, but in both instances, “majority rule” defined the system.

How someone defined “majority rule” presented the most pressing problem.

If it was simply 50% plus one, then the majority would prove to plunder the minority. This happens every time. Is that good government?

Calhoun certainly didn’t think so, which is why he came up with his “concurrent majority,” a system that allowed for minority interests to have a say in the system.

It would still lead to a majority, but Calhoun knew the end result would be a central government so limited in scope that it could almost do no harm.

Has democracy produced great results? A honest answer would be complex, but we also have to realize that the United States government is not “democratic” and the left knows it. That’s why they want to abolish the Senate, the Electoral College, and pack the Supreme Court.

Of course, if they really liked democracy, they would support federalism and State governments as those and typically much more democratic than the central government in Washington.

You know why they won’t? Because those democratic governments don’t usually get on board with their lunacy, so they want to use the tyranny of the 50% plus 1 to ravage the rest of the United States.

In fact, you could argue that the only reason we have a culture war in the United States is because of the anti-democratic federal courts. Take away the left’s ability to legislate from the bench and thwart real local government and they have very little to show for all of their hot air activism.

Most Americans are not on board with their stupidity.

I discuss the meaning of democracy and American history on episode 639 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

During the 2020 Summer of Love, progressives were orgiastic about tearing down traditional American society. The low hanging fruit had always been Confederate history.

2020 was just a continuation of 2015 and 2017. Of course, no one could identify how a school named for Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley affected police officers in Minnesota, but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that the woke cultural Marxists had the advantage, or so they thought.

A local school board in the Shenandoah Valley decided to change the names of two schools in the district named for Confederate heroes, the most conspicuous being Stonewall Jackson High School, built in 1959.

To brain dead wokies, the high school was named as a symbol of “massive resistance” following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. When I say brain dead, I mean it.

Jackson’s valley campaign is still studied at West Point. He was a native of Virginia, and the people of the Shenandoah Valley certainly remember Sheridan’s burning in 1864, one of the most egregious crimes against civilians during the War.

If any school deserved to be named Stonewall Jackson, it was that one.

But the school board voting to change the name anyway. No one really knows why. Even the meetings were dominated by those in opposition.

Now, after a concerted effort on the part of native Virginians and alumni of the school, the names might be restored. It still appears to be a long shot, but it is real “think locally, act locally” in action.

And the dopes on the left can’t stand it.

You see, this is “anti-democratic.” You can’t make up their kind of stupid, but you don’t need to. They proudly display their mental incompetence on a regular basis.

Or maybe it’s mental illness. It’s hard to differentiate with those people.

This made for great podcast fodder, so I discuss the issue on Episode 638 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

While most American conservatives have embraced “Let’s Go Brandon!” the problems of executive abuse run deeper than the drooler in chief.

Real American conservatives should have been chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” to virtually every president over the last one hundred years.

Not even the “conservative” Reagan should get a pass, but he does.

In fact, you could say that most American presidents should have been impeached, that is if we adhered to the Constitution as ratified.

But the problem with executive abuse is not so much the executive. It’s the Congress.

Back in 1842, John C. Calhoun defended John Tyler’s use of the veto against Henry Clay’s “American System.” Clay wanted to punish Tyler and reduce the threshold for overriding a veto.

Calhoun said this would be folly because Congress was the real culprit in overzealous government action.

You see, Tyler was simply trying to check the unconstitutional acts of Mr. Clay, and Calhoun rightly saw Clay’s potential reforms as little more than grandstanding.

If you want to cut the unconstitutional powers of the president, you need to cut the the unconstitutional government created almost exclusively by congress since 1789.

Calhoun pointed to every element of the American System as an abuse of power and then asked how the president had anything to do with it.

He also argued in 1837 that the Congress could abolish slavery. Why not? It had already passed so much unconstitutional legislation that it was reasonable to argue that it had the power to do whatever it wanted.

This is why Nancy Pelosi stammered indignantly when she was challenged about the constitutionality of Obamacare. Of course it’s constitutional. Anything is constitutional if congress passes it, or so the “nationalists” have always believed.

This is why Congress should be pegged as the entity that really screwed up America. The president and the Supreme Court have had their moments, but both could be checked by Congress.

And you know who could check Congress? The States.

Even President Brandon knows that “only power can check power,” but most Americans think this means the general government.

Nope. The States have always been able to fight fire with fire so to speak.

We just need a few hundred people thinking locally and acting locally to make it happen.

I discuss how Congress screwed up America on episode 637 of The Brion McClanahan Show.