The Auron MacIntyre Show - June 04, 2025


Is It a Republic？ Can We Keep It？ ｜ 6⧸4⧸25


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

168.10585

Word Count

3,316

Sentence Count

154


Summary


Transcript

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00:00:28.580 See AirCanada.com.
00:00:30.000 When progressives claim democracy as the justifying principle for their latest crime against humanity,
00:00:42.980 the automatic conservative retort is,
00:00:45.200 well, thankfully, America is a republic, not a democracy.
00:00:48.740 While that is historically true, few Republican voters have really considered the difference.
00:00:53.800 If pressed, conservatives will cite the election of representatives rather than direct democracy as the key difference.
00:01:00.000 When I taught civics in public school, this was the canned answer that we fed to the students.
00:01:04.960 It's also completely inaccurate.
00:01:07.040 Many conservatives claim that they'd like to return to the values and traditions of the founding fathers.
00:01:11.500 But that's very difficult to do without first understanding the historical and philosophical context of those traditions.
00:01:17.800 To that end, in this episode, we're going to be investigating the nature of republics,
00:01:23.080 evaluating whether that label accurately applies to the current government of the United States,
00:01:27.660 and determining whether we can return to a republican form of government if we lost it.
00:01:32.000 Monarchy is the most universal form of government on the planet.
00:01:36.460 But even the nature of monarchy varies widely for each particular people who practice it.
00:01:42.180 In many monarchical systems, like ancient Egypt or China, the god-king reigns.
00:01:46.980 But even when the English had a meaningful kingship,
00:01:49.940 their sovereign was always limited by documents like the Magna Carta.
00:01:53.760 The Anglo tradition has never been comfortable with the concentration of power in a single figure,
00:01:59.040 even when recognizing the need for a powerful executive.
00:02:02.480 The American tradition itself, Anglo-Protestant in nature,
00:02:05.880 took this one step further by creating a federated republic with a mixed constitution.
00:02:11.020 The philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, no relation,
00:02:13.960 claimed that for any tradition to survive, it must be able to overcome an epistemological crisis,
00:02:19.540 not just by resolving the crisis at hand, but by having a coherent explanation for why the crisis arose
00:02:25.540 and why the tradition had to undergo modification.
00:02:28.740 By exploring the classic understanding of what defines a republic,
00:02:32.380 we'll be better able to understand whether a crisis has indeed taken place,
00:02:36.800 and whether we can reconstitute that tradition,
00:02:39.640 or if, as Machiavelli put it, the founding of new modes and orders is necessary.
00:02:44.240 Americans often treat the constitution as some piece of novel political technology
00:02:50.160 that created the form of the republic while solving politics in perpetuity.
00:02:55.660 In reality, the republic is an ancient form of government
00:02:58.420 with a tradition stretching from Aristotle to Machiavelli
00:03:01.500 to the American founders like John Adams, who cited Machiavelli as an influence.
00:03:06.400 For all of these thinkers, the virtue of the citizen was the key that enabled republics to flourish.
00:03:11.320 Citizens didn't hold their status as voters
00:03:14.720 simply because they happened to be living inside the borders of the country.
00:03:18.140 Expressing political will was the purview of the patriarch,
00:03:21.360 who had proven himself capable of owning property,
00:03:24.000 caring for an extended family,
00:03:25.720 and defending his domain through violence when necessary.
00:03:29.000 It was the need to master and maintain these domains that cultivated virtue
00:03:33.100 and made one worthy of participating in the body politic.
00:03:37.180 Each of these thinkers also acknowledged the willingness of the citizen
00:03:40.660 to take up arms as a key aspect of republican government.
00:03:44.700 Aristotle said that the citizen is he who is armed.
00:03:47.580 Machiavelli made the need for a citizen militia a central theme through all of his political works.
00:03:53.260 In his Art of War, the Italian political thinker argued against the use of both mercenaries
00:03:58.200 and standing armies which would create a separate soldier class.
00:04:02.820 For the republic to maintain its virtue,
00:04:04.840 every citizen must be willing to serve in his own defense and the defense of the nation.
00:04:10.560 Service guarantees citizenship is the famous line from Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers,
00:04:15.900 but he's only echoing an ancient sentiment.
00:04:18.780 The franchise exists for those who are willing to face danger and overcome it for the sake of the republic.
00:04:24.700 Alexander Hamilton acknowledged this tradition while arguing in Federalist 24 and 29
00:04:30.260 that the state should turn their militias over to the central government
00:04:34.160 to avoid the need for a standing army.
00:04:37.140 Quote,
00:04:37.720 If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country,
00:04:41.440 it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of the body
00:04:46.140 which is constituted the guardian of the national security.
00:04:50.160 If standing armies are dangerous to liberty,
00:04:52.600 an efficacious power over the militia,
00:04:54.980 in the body to whose care the protection of the state is committed,
00:04:58.140 ought, as far as possible,
00:05:00.380 to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions.
00:05:06.160 If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies
00:05:10.420 which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate,
00:05:15.240 it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force.
00:05:20.460 If it cannot avail itself of the former,
00:05:23.180 it will be obliged to recur to the latter.
00:05:25.240 To render an army unnecessary will be a more certain method of preventing its existence
00:05:31.040 than a thousand prohibitions upon paper.
00:05:34.000 End quote.
00:05:35.060 This is why we see so much confusion over the language of the Second Amendment.
00:05:39.000 The citizen militia was assumed to be the default mode of armed defense for a free republic.
00:05:44.460 Of course, every individual had a right to bear arms.
00:05:47.500 How else could the United States protect itself?
00:05:50.080 To be clear, none of this validates the leftist claim that the Second Amendment is somehow outdated.
00:05:54.360 The right to self-defense doesn't cease to exist because the United States has a professional military.
00:06:00.120 But it is important to understand the context in which these critical documents were written.
00:06:04.740 Hamilton would continue the push towards a standing American military,
00:06:08.720 but he had to acknowledge and address the deep apprehension of them inside the republican tradition.
00:06:14.300 The founders were also familiar with the need for a cohesive cultural identity
00:06:18.160 as the foundation of the republic.
00:06:19.820 In Federalist No. 2, John Jay wrote,
00:06:22.580 With equal pleasure, I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give
00:06:28.380 this one connected country to one united people.
00:06:31.740 A people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion,
00:06:37.420 attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs,
00:06:41.920 and who, by their joint councils, arms, and efforts, fighting side-by-side throughout a long and bloody war,
00:06:49.480 have nobly established general liberty and independence."
00:06:53.460 Admittedly, Jay was engaged in a bit of wish-casting as this statement was not entirely accurate when it was made,
00:07:00.700 but he recognized that it needed to become accurate if the nation was to succeed.
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00:07:36.920 They say that Chauvin was railroaded, that Waltz completely failed them,
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00:08:07.020 One thing that conservatives rarely consider when arguing in favor of Republican governance
00:08:12.040 is whether the form has any inherent limitations.
00:08:15.520 As mentioned previously, Machiavelli argued that standing armies are a danger to Republican government
00:08:21.580 because they create a separate military class,
00:08:24.240 destroying the equality among the citizens, diminishing their virtue,
00:08:28.140 and incentivizing a policy of conquest lest bored and unpaid soldiers turn against their host nation.
00:08:35.200 In his book, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Leo Strauss expands on this argument,
00:08:39.540 warning that imperial republics will unwisely extend their franchise to the unworthy
00:08:44.620 because their manpower and commitment is needed to expand.
00:08:49.020 Strauss warns that the desire to expand
00:08:51.100 usually requires the liberal admission of foreigners for citizenship,
00:08:55.360 which increases domestic strife and leads to the degradation of virtue.
00:09:00.240 Those that join the republic in this manner are primarily concerned with wealth,
00:09:04.280 and the imperial republic quickly becomes a machine for enriching its new mercenary citizens,
00:09:09.200 leading to its demise.
00:09:11.140 Now we have to face a reality of our time.
00:09:14.440 Power always seeks to expand its borders and centralize control for a reason.
00:09:18.620 If France gains the power to draft its entire male population for military service,
00:09:24.220 surrounding nations can find a justification to do the same thing,
00:09:27.880 or likely be crushed by a more powerful foe.
00:09:30.840 The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the United States all developed different rationale
00:09:35.800 for mass propaganda, economic centralization, and mass military production,
00:09:40.600 but they developed them simultaneously for a reason.
00:09:43.640 Power is an arms race, and no matter how much you oppose the use of something like nuclear weapons,
00:09:50.080 once your enemy has one, you can either develop your own or become a smoldering wasteland.
00:09:55.040 In the modern world, scale has proved to be a devastating weapon of its own,
00:09:59.340 and nothing destroys republican governance as effectively as scale.
00:10:03.540 The geopolitical reality in our age is one of large-standing armies,
00:10:08.660 overseas imperial holdings, and sprawling networks of global trade.
00:10:12.640 The nations that have been successful have indulged deeply in these practices.
00:10:17.680 These are also the various behaviors that have been identified as the ruin of republican governance.
00:10:23.380 The large bureaucratic structures required to scale government to this level
00:10:27.060 take on responsibilities that were once the domain of citizens and communities,
00:10:31.620 destroying the opportunity to cultivate and exercise virtue.
00:10:35.080 The mass immigration required to feed the managerial state apparatus fractures national identity,
00:10:40.140 and mass democracy extends the franchise to the unworthy.
00:10:43.800 The idea of personal duty and virtue are tossed aside as every faction uses their political clout
00:10:50.400 to carve out a piece of the pie that must continue to expand lest it be consumed by the interests it has created.
00:10:57.760 Tens of millions of illegal immigrants now reside in the United States,
00:11:01.780 expecting amnesty to deliver voting rights to them
00:11:04.440 and birthright citizenship to automatically secure the franchise for their children.
00:11:08.480 The idea of the citizen militia is well in the rearview mirror,
00:11:12.780 as the United States maintains a large standing army which takes on the character of a hereditary class
00:11:17.900 as fewer and fewer Americans outside the military interact with service members.
00:11:22.880 Foreign war for the purpose of expanding or maintaining the American empire is constant.
00:11:27.500 The press is even finally admitting that Joe Biden was never really the president,
00:11:32.200 which makes a mockery of the notion of popular sovereignty.
00:11:35.760 While the founders intended for this nation to exist as a republic,
00:11:40.040 they warned that it would only remain one if we fought to keep it that way.
00:11:44.220 It is very difficult to argue that we have done so successfully.
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00:12:14.380 While the United States may no longer be accurately classified as a republic,
00:12:23.300 that political formula still holds great power as it lies at the foundation of our tradition.
00:12:29.080 People still speak in the language of constitutionally restrained government,
00:12:33.080 expecting the fruits of a virtuous society even if they don't understand how to cultivate it.
00:12:37.940 This means that while the republican tradition in America may be on life support,
00:12:41.780 it's not dead, and it's worth exploring whether it can be revived.
00:12:46.540 In his essay, Nationalism, Old and New, the political commentator and theorist Samuel Francis
00:12:51.800 outlined the tension between the original federated republican model
00:12:55.800 and the unified national empire desired by figures like Alexander Hamilton.
00:13:00.800 That battle existed at the very beginning of the country,
00:13:03.420 and despite the republican tradition being deeply implanted in the American people,
00:13:07.920 the advantages of scale and the desire for centralization slowly pulled toward unified nationalism.
00:13:14.640 This national centralization stripped away the cultural particularities that were protected
00:13:19.220 by the regional and federated nature of the republic,
00:13:22.560 as it attempted to bring every citizen under the direct control of Washington.
00:13:26.200 Large bureaucratic organizations were erected to manage the American population,
00:13:32.040 offering to take away burdensome responsibilities like the education of children or care for the elderly.
00:13:37.960 At every step, the bureaucratic structure also robbed the population of the responsibility
00:13:42.260 and self-reliance necessary for the cultivation of virtue,
00:13:46.520 making republican governance increasingly impossible.
00:13:49.740 For Francis, this unified imperial nationalism was always at odds with the true nature of the American republic,
00:13:55.580 and he believed that it would inevitably doom the republic, just as Machiavelli had predicted.
00:14:00.880 Instead of pining for a tradition that he venerated but ultimately believed to be extinct,
00:14:05.260 Francis suggested that the right embrace a new nationalism that was not hostile to the interests of the American people.
00:14:11.460 The political theorists believed that the revolution of scale had made republicanism obsolete,
00:14:16.580 and that the conservatives should deal with this reality.
00:14:20.300 According to Francis, the American people were no longer independent and virtuous.
00:14:23.860 They had become reliant on mass bureaucratic institutions to survive in the modern world.
00:14:29.560 Francis envisioned a revolution from the middle,
00:14:32.300 where the mass bureaucratic institutions which had become hostile to middle Americans
00:14:36.240 were instead operated for their benefit.
00:14:39.660 The Federated Republic just wasn't coming back,
00:14:42.300 so conservatives had to deal with that reality,
00:14:44.380 and at least middle Americans could have a government that benefited them instead of hating them.
00:14:49.020 Leviathan was here to stay,
00:14:50.620 but perhaps it could be turned towards the good of the people.
00:14:52.920 I admire the incredible prescience that Francis often demonstrated,
00:14:57.820 but I must say in this case, I believe he may have been wrong.
00:15:01.420 The author wrote this essay over 30 years ago,
00:15:04.200 and while at the time it seemed like scale was winning in every domain,
00:15:08.060 we're now seeing that it also has serious downsides.
00:15:11.440 The massive bureaucracies of the United States have turned on their citizens,
00:15:14.920 but they have also become bloated, sclerotic, and incompetent.
00:15:18.540 Airlines have an increasingly difficult time operating their services.
00:15:21.500 Global supply chains endure significant disruption,
00:15:25.240 and educational institutions find it almost impossible to graduate students
00:15:29.080 with the ability to read and write properly.
00:15:31.580 I'm not going to be able to properly elaborate on every argument
00:15:34.740 for why I think mass managerial bureaucracies are doomed to fail,
00:15:38.960 but I've done so in my book, The Total State,
00:15:40.980 as well as many videos on this channel.
00:15:43.180 So if you'd like to know more, you can check them out.
00:15:45.260 The point is that the reign of quantity may be coming to an end,
00:15:48.900 and if so, the opportunity for a proper republican government might reemerge.
00:15:53.520 While the solution offered by Francis is a practical one,
00:15:56.980 it's ultimately undesirable if it can be avoided.
00:16:00.220 Francis himself made the argument that reliance on these mass centralized organizations
00:16:05.080 would continue to degrade the virtue of Americans,
00:16:09.000 even if they were reformed to serve the population in a benevolent manner.
00:16:12.800 His solution was to use bureaucratic institutions
00:16:15.780 to instill an ethic of solidarity, discipline, and sacrifice
00:16:19.200 that would ultimately overcome the deleterious impact of scale,
00:16:22.780 but I'm doubtful that this will ultimately solve the problem.
00:16:25.980 The limitations of the political formula must be recognized,
00:16:29.460 and just as republics have a problem with scale,
00:16:32.340 unified mass bureaucracy has a problem with virtue and self-reliance.
00:16:36.300 It just can't produce them.
00:16:38.060 The power of scale had an impressive run for a few hundred years,
00:16:41.120 but the long string of victories has come to an end.
00:16:44.440 The turn away from massification will not be immediate,
00:16:47.740 but we can already see the first steps being taken.
00:16:50.980 Donald Trump seeks to remove the United States from large international bodies
00:16:54.500 like NATO and the World Health Organization,
00:16:56.960 and is pushing to reshore American industry.
00:16:59.660 It's increasingly obvious that perpetual imperial expansion
00:17:02.820 and global financial entanglement are a detriment to the American people.
00:17:06.580 Domestically, the president is dismantling bureaucracies
00:17:09.860 that are openly hostile to middle Americans like the Department of Education,
00:17:14.080 just as Samuel Francis suggested.
00:17:16.640 If the power of scale diminishes and more authority is devolved
00:17:19.640 back down to the states and communities,
00:17:22.140 then the possibility of returning to republican governance re-emerges.
00:17:26.240 If not, then the middle American nationalism of Sam Francis
00:17:29.440 may be the only path forward.
00:17:31.240 If that's the case, then we will have met the conditions
00:17:34.260 Alistair MacIntyre set out for a tradition which is able to overcome a crisis.
00:17:39.140 The Founding Fathers would not be wrong,
00:17:41.420 they would have devised exactly the right system of government
00:17:43.920 for the reality of their time.
00:17:45.880 But the reality of scale in the modern world
00:17:48.320 would have brought the viability of the system to its natural end.
00:17:52.880 We could continue to honor the Founders
00:17:55.100 and carry on the spirit of their tradition
00:17:56.920 while having a coherent explanation as to why that tradition had to undergo change.
00:18:02.800 Ultimately, I believe that the failure of massification
00:18:05.680 will mean a return to the republican form of government is possible.
00:18:10.140 But the good news is that whether I'm right or Francis is right,
00:18:13.280 the solution in the meantime is the same.
00:18:15.960 We must work the solution at both ends,
00:18:18.460 with Trump cutting hostile bureaucracies,
00:18:20.540 reforming foreign and economic policy,
00:18:23.060 and orienting the remaining institutions of the United States
00:18:26.140 towards the well-being of middle Americans.
00:18:28.700 At the regional level,
00:18:29.720 we must rebuild robust communities and local institutions.
00:18:33.860 Churches, fraternal societies,
00:18:35.600 and civil organizations must return to prominence,
00:18:38.920 helping to free local communities
00:18:40.600 from dependence on centralized bureaucracies
00:18:42.920 while encouraging the development of virtue.
00:18:46.400 We must produce the kind of leaders
00:18:48.260 who will be able to act in the interests of the American people,
00:18:51.260 whether their future be the revivification of the republican tradition
00:18:54.820 or the embrace of a new middle American nationalism.
00:18:58.900 Thanks, everybody, for watching.
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00:19:29.080 If you'd like to learn more about the fall of mass managerial bureaucracies,
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00:19:40.240 Thank you, everybody, for watching,
00:19:41.520 and as always, I'll talk to you next time.