The Auron MacIntyre Show - Revolution from the Middle ｜ Guest： C.Jay Engel

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00:00:30.180 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.760 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.420 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:37.760 So a lot of people have recognized that despite the middle class being one of the core pieces

00:00:43.840 of the American story, one of the core pieces of the American identity, and a group that

00:00:50.140 should in some ways have a lot of influence on the way the country is going, somehow this

00:00:55.560 group is the one group that doesn't have anyone who's actually fighting for them.

00:00:59.840 And I wanted to talk a little bit today as to why we find ourselves in this situation.

00:01:05.480 How did Middle America get here?

00:01:07.540 Why is no one championing Middle America?

00:01:09.540 And how can that change?

00:01:11.640 Joining me today to talk about that is CJ Engel.

00:01:15.080 He is the host of the Chronicles Magazine podcast, along with a few others.

00:01:20.600 CJ, thanks for joining me, man.

00:01:22.520 Thanks for having me.

00:01:23.880 Absolutely.

00:01:24.400 You wrote a great piece about this.

00:01:26.040 It's a long one, but it's a good one.

00:01:27.640 People should definitely check it out.

00:01:28.880 It's over at the American Reformer.

00:01:30.760 And I wanted to bring you on because I think you did a great job of addressing this problem,

00:01:34.920 pulling from a couple different sources, explaining some of the tensions that are really at the

00:01:39.920 heart of the conservative movement and why it doesn't actually represent most of Middle

00:01:45.140 America and maybe some of the ways forward.

00:01:47.680 So the piece that you wrote was called Revolution from the Middle, taking its name from the classic

00:01:53.900 Sam Francis book.

00:01:55.280 And I was hoping you could start by laying out why Middle America finds itself in this

00:02:00.580 situation.

00:02:01.340 How is this place called the heartland where you have a lot of the entrepreneurs and people

00:02:06.600 who are familiar with America and what makes it work and its traditions and carrying those

00:02:11.320 things forward?

00:02:12.040 How did they become the most disenfranchised people in the United States?

00:02:15.640 Yeah, there's a lot of different theories about that.

00:02:18.640 And, you know, the great question is, did they vote themselves into oblivion or were they

00:02:23.260 betrayed by the elites?

00:02:24.880 And I take the latter category, you know, for those of us on the right who recognize that

00:02:29.660 American culture and American socioeconomics and politics is really the downstream from the

00:02:36.600 confrontation of different elite classes and different elite groups.

00:02:40.220 With someone who thinks that way, it's basically elite theory, you realize that the Middle America

00:02:46.840 has had very few heroes, very few people who are willing to represent them and stand up for

00:02:55.660 what was good for them.

00:02:56.440 Because part of the problem is that it was much easier to benefit from the machinations of

00:03:02.600 power if you didn't have to look out for those in the middle.

00:03:06.000 You know, in one of the things we'll probably talk about defining the middle class, what does

00:03:10.640 it mean to be in America, Middle American?

00:03:12.780 And I just want to really emphasize the fact that it's not just an economic class.

00:03:17.780 It's also a cultural phenomenon to the you know, I call them heritage Americans, but people who

00:03:23.060 really represent the ethos and the spirit of America as it existed before the civil rights

00:03:29.420 revolution, there was nobody in Washington who was able to confront the revolutionary left.

00:03:36.700 And you have this elite party that basically, you know, took advantage of the managerial system

00:03:42.980 at that time.

00:03:43.740 And over the, you know, succeeding 50 to 100 years, depending on when you want to start

00:03:48.160 that process.

00:03:49.340 But basically, very few people stood up, you know, you have people like George Wallace or

00:03:55.660 Ross Perot, in some ways, Pat Buchanan, there were some people, but really, they just didn't

00:04:01.080 have what it takes.

00:04:02.040 And so I would describe the failure of the conservative movement to defend middle America as a great

00:04:09.700 betrayal.

00:04:10.620 They were betrayed.

00:04:11.460 They were led to believe that the conservative movement, the Republican Party would be willing

00:04:16.520 and able to defend them to assert their ability to live life as they wanted to.

00:04:22.900 Um, and yet that conservative movement took all movement, took all of its funds, all of

00:04:28.060 its resources, all of its momentum, and basically just, um, stacked up its own ability to take

00:04:34.920 advantage of the power system and basically betrayed middle America at large.

00:04:39.260 So I would, I would answer your question by saying middle America has been betrayed by the

00:04:44.000 elite.

00:04:44.500 They didn't vote for this problem.

00:04:46.600 They basically were just ignored.

00:04:48.780 Yeah.

00:04:49.220 And I think that's critical because look, there are guys that I really respect and who I really

00:04:54.220 love and who I think otherwise have great insights, but they'll say things like, well, the problem

00:04:59.260 is just the, the Republican primary voter.

00:05:02.260 If only we got out there and we just threw out the bums, got rid of the rhinos, we got really,

00:05:07.920 you know, vigorous in every primary and, uh, you know, created some kind of consequence for

00:05:12.840 this, then we would go ahead and see this change.

00:05:16.640 And just looking, if you just want the, the, just, you know, the, the latest example, the

00:05:22.040 switch of Mike Johnson into the speakership, right?

00:05:25.220 Just throwing out, uh, Kevin McCarthy, thinking that you're going to get some kind of significant

00:05:29.900 change and then finding out that actually you have someone who's just as bad or actually

00:05:34.300 even worse behind him.

00:05:35.900 And it seems like this is just the story of the entire conservative movement in a microcosm

00:05:40.940 that they continue to say, well, we're going to get rid of these people.

00:05:43.600 We're going to vote this out.

00:05:44.460 We're going to vote for change.

00:05:45.480 We're going to do something.

00:05:46.720 And then there's just a stack of elites behind that all have the same ideology and none of

00:05:50.880 it is about protecting these people.

00:05:53.160 And so I definitely want to get into that in detail, but we should probably do first what

00:05:56.620 you were talking about there, which is to define middle America.

00:05:59.500 Cause I would agree with you that there's a little bit of a tragedy.

00:06:02.680 I mean, in some ways it's very American.

00:06:04.140 The fact that we don't identify class really, we don't have social classes in the way, or

00:06:09.640 at least we don't think we have social classes in the way that many other European countries

00:06:13.560 understood them.

00:06:14.960 And so we tend to just boil down the class into this crass economic structure, but of

00:06:20.560 course it makes no sense because the barista making $13 an hour with a gender studies degree

00:06:26.520 understands that she's in a different bracket on a different team than a plumber who's making

00:06:31.860 $200,000 a year, right?

00:06:33.960 They might be economically very different, but you know, they know where they land and

00:06:41.120 the middle class is in some ways, you know, it does have some economic overlap, but like

00:06:46.720 you said, this is really a group that in many ways is kind of the rural white evangelical,

00:06:53.400 but not always.

00:06:55.360 It's like, there's a, there, there's an expand, there's kind of an expansion around that identity.

00:06:59.760 It's, it is mostly that it is centered in some ways on that.

00:07:03.200 And that is certainly where the hatred of the left comes from, but that is not the sole

00:07:06.440 identifier.

00:07:06.960 So I wonder if you could lay out a little bit what it means to be a middle American.

00:07:12.940 Yeah.

00:07:13.440 So that, that phrase, um, the very concept of, um, uh, and we're going to talk about the

00:07:18.300 middle American radicals.

00:07:19.740 So what happened in the, you know, post civil war was, and a lot of this was derivative of

00:07:24.660 the managerial revolution and sort of the economic changes that came after world war II, but Donald

00:07:29.660 Warren was the sociologist and he described this phenomenon that took place.

00:07:34.380 He didn't use the managerial revolution as a phrase or as a concept.

00:07:38.160 You know, of course, when I say managerial revolution, I'm talking about the insight of,

00:07:42.200 of James Burnham.

00:07:43.580 Um, and, and that insight was picked up on, uh, by Sam Francis later, but you have this

00:07:47.980 new economic, uh, system coming into play and really, uh, working itself out over the

00:07:53.580 middle decades of the 20th century.

00:07:56.300 And he described the situation where there was the power elite and this power elite had basically

00:08:02.040 centralized and consolidated their power doing during the new deal era.

00:08:06.420 And they basically had teamed up and you can see this with LBJ and the great society, um,

00:08:12.380 emphasizing the, the need for the state to prop up the, the lower classes, right?

00:08:18.400 So you have this very economic dynamic and the elites could accumulate power unto themselves

00:08:24.420 by benefiting or giving resources to the lower classes.

00:08:28.880 And the ones that did not receive any special benefit were the middle classes.

00:08:32.860 The upper classes received all sorts of government contracts and grants and special privileges

00:08:38.140 and the lower classes would receive all sorts of subsidies and benefits in their own way.

00:08:44.280 But the one group that didn't receive anything was the middle class.

00:08:47.600 And this was described by him in economic terms.

00:08:51.080 It was basically best thought of as income levels, uh, you know, where you live.

00:08:56.300 Suburban America was basically overlooked, uh, in the 1970s.

00:09:00.280 Um, so he's the one that came up with this idea of, um, of, um, the middle American radicals,

00:09:05.720 because when you see that conception, when you see that framework of things, uh, being unleashed

00:09:12.100 in the 1960s and seventies and eighties, you do find that middle-class Americans were increasingly

00:09:17.500 frustrated.

00:09:18.180 They were the backbone of the American economy.

00:09:21.100 They were the backbone of the electoral system.

00:09:23.600 Everybody needed to capture, um, you know, their momentum if they wanted to be elected.

00:09:28.040 And yet over time, they began to be pushed out and their desires and their priorities,

00:09:33.360 their struggles and their needs were basically overlooked.

00:09:36.340 But what Sam Francis did is he realized that it's not clear enough to speak in terms of economics.

00:09:42.940 You also need to add in a layer of culture there.

00:09:45.180 And you really begin to see this, I think in the eighties, this is when the paleo conservative

00:09:49.960 movement really reached its, its height in the eighties and nineties with, you know, people

00:09:54.400 like Pat Buchanan and others, Russell Kirk and others, they began to realize that there was

00:09:59.220 more at play here.

00:10:00.660 It wasn't just money that defined the middle class.

00:10:05.240 There was also an entire way of life and entire culture behind it.

00:10:09.520 And we see now in Pat Buchanan has his 1992 speech on the, on the culture wars.

00:10:13.980 The phrase culture wars is, um, talked about all the time.

00:10:18.060 Now we recognize the fact that it's not just money at play, but it's who you represent, who

00:10:22.960 you are, where your roots are, the, the, the way that you live your life and the priorities

00:10:28.220 that you have culturally, those are the things that are being squashed out.

00:10:31.840 And so this middle American radicalism began to, um, basically transform into something that

00:10:39.100 I think is much more culturally emphasized rather than economically emphasized.

00:10:43.180 Yeah.

00:10:44.200 And that's important because of course, I think some people watching this have probably heard

00:10:48.620 about the high, low versus middle, right?

00:10:51.420 The Bertrand de Juvenal formulation of how power often operates to consolidate.

00:10:56.260 And a key function of that, like you said, is not just the economic aspect of it, but the

00:11:01.740 fact that really what makes the middle, something that power wants to erode is its establishment

00:11:06.780 in the ways and traditions of the nation.

00:11:10.700 The fact that the people who are in the middle don't, it's not just that they have the stability

00:11:14.760 of money or property, though, that is critical.

00:11:17.280 It's also that they represent the old order.

00:11:20.160 They have loyalties that are bound into ancient, uh, structures.

00:11:24.520 And so they're far more likely to be interested in regional power, family, uh, tribe, the, the

00:11:31.340 basis of much more organic institutions.

00:11:34.900 And so if power is going to consolidate, they need to go ahead and wear away, not just that

00:11:40.520 the economic aspect of the middle class, but also in that kind of cultural fortification

00:11:45.580 that keeps it from being easily subsumed into the larger managerial structure.

00:11:50.140 And of course, Sam Francis talks about this in Leviathan and his enemies, that the bourgeoisie

00:11:54.860 order had to be corroded, had to be corrupted in every way because it was not sufficiently,

00:11:59.980 uh, centralized.

00:12:01.120 It still had too much regional particularity built into the system.

00:12:05.480 Um, and that doesn't mean again, just getting rid of property though, that's critical, but

00:12:09.780 also getting rid of all those cultural institutions.

00:12:12.280 So you talked about the transition and the kind of the rise of the paleo cons.

00:12:19.020 Now, I, maybe you can lay out for people because I think it's important for them to understand

00:12:24.060 when did these different shifts in the conservative movement take place?

00:12:28.320 Cause we're of course talking about the problems with the conservative movement and why it doesn't,

00:12:31.320 uh, actually represent middle America.

00:12:34.060 Obviously there's a huge shift in kind of the fifties and sixties with the entrance of

00:12:39.200 neoconservatives and their takeover of the movement.

00:12:42.300 And the paleo cons are actually more of a reaction to the neoconservative agenda than perhaps

00:12:48.180 their own movement.

00:12:49.260 So I wonder if you could lay out that transition for people so that they understand where the

00:12:53.720 paleo cons came from before we talk about what their mission was.

00:12:57.720 Yeah.

00:12:58.320 So I would describe, um, something called the old right.

00:13:01.920 And the old right was actually, um, you know, it was a collection of traditionalists, uh,

00:13:07.120 you know, philosophical traditionalists, but also churchmen and businessmen, uh, even

00:13:12.240 media people back then, you know, there was the, um, McCormick and who, who ran the Chicago

00:13:16.500 Tribune and, you know, in the 1940s, they were all against American intervention in world

00:13:20.620 war two, Charles Lindbergh.

00:13:21.920 It was all the old America first guys.

00:13:24.200 And I would describe this as the old right and the old right, um, their priorities, uh,

00:13:29.840 we're not in making the world a better place.

00:13:31.820 They didn't care about, uh, saving Europe from some ideological threat.

00:13:35.620 They just wanted to basically, uh, fortify their own wellbeing in their various regions

00:13:41.460 and sectors on the American scene.

00:13:43.500 Um, so that's what I would, and, and part of the old right to included like some classical

00:13:47.740 liberals, like, you know, Albert J.

00:13:49.480 Knock, Garrett Garrett, you know, people like that.

00:13:51.960 They were basically a new deal coalition.

00:13:53.820 They, they opposed the, um, on the domestic scene, they opposed the, the managerial revolution

00:13:59.160 and the centralization of economic power.

00:14:01.860 Um, but they also opposed, um, you know, American military force, uh, for the benefit of, of this

00:14:08.560 imperial, you know, mindset, you know, that basically was rooted back into Woodrow Wilson

00:14:12.960 and the progressivist, uh, demeanor on foreign policy.

00:14:16.500 So this old right was this coalition that basically was, um, liquidated, I would say

00:14:21.900 in the 19, you know, right after the war, the 19, late 1940s, 1950s, uh, basically America

00:14:27.740 needed, had a problem.

00:14:28.800 And its problem was that it wasn't able to, um, extend and expand its own, um, hegemony

00:14:34.840 in the world, uh, if people had more of a regionalist mindset.

00:14:38.580 And so part of what happened is this new right came about and this new right was led by people

00:14:44.140 like Bill Buckley and national review.

00:14:46.520 And he started this long purge, um, era of the conservative movement in which, you know,

00:14:52.660 the cranks and the classical liberals and the constitutional dogmatists and, you know,

00:14:58.200 the John Birchers and anyone that was considered unpalatable, uh, for the regime in Washington

00:15:03.480 was basically just pushed out of the movement.

00:15:05.580 Their funding was taken away.

00:15:08.020 They were mocked and made fun of it.

00:15:09.760 You know, so anyone that had much more of an older pre-World War II mindset in, in, in

00:15:15.660 their definition of America was much older, they were basically pushed out.

00:15:19.700 And so that was kind of the transition in the fifties and sixties from the old right to

00:15:24.120 the new right.

00:15:24.820 So that's, that's the way that people like, you know, like Paul Gottfried and Sam Francis,

00:15:28.340 they would describe the new right, not as the post Bush new right, but actually this post

00:15:32.900 war new right that took place, the, the neoconservatives came later as the democratic party, uh, began

00:15:39.420 to, you know, push its own, you know, push the borders of its own sanity.

00:15:43.640 You could say the neoconservatives are those that wanted to basically, you know, stop things

00:15:48.640 in the 1950s and 1960s.

00:15:50.460 And they basically infiltrated the Republican party and Paul Gottfried describes this in

00:15:55.320 his book, the conservative movement.

00:15:57.280 But basically he's, he makes the case that because the new right undermined the strength

00:16:02.620 and integrity of the old right, the new right was therefore ripe for takeover.

00:16:07.080 And the neoconservatives were able to, um, take over the new right.

00:16:11.140 And Bill Buckley wasn't entirely comfortable with a lot of them in the 1970s.

00:16:15.280 Um, but they were strategic, um, masters and they were strategically brilliant and they

00:16:21.580 took over the Republic.

00:16:22.900 There's this, I mean, the neoconservatives are not a large group.

00:16:25.380 They're a very small group of people, ex-Trotskyites, you know, they came from the left and they

00:16:30.320 basically captured the Republican party.

00:16:32.240 And so I would describe neoconservatism as a takeover of the new right, which had already

00:16:37.740 undermined the integrity of the old right.

00:16:40.060 And the paleoconservatives were of course aware of all of this happening ever since the beginning,

00:16:45.280 um, but they described themselves as trying to, in some sense, issue some sort of counter

00:16:52.320 revolution against the neocons and take things back to the mentality of the 1930s and 1940s

00:16:58.740 old right.

00:16:59.640 So can you explain the difference between perhaps a, in the piece you talk about how Russell

00:17:05.060 Kirk was more of a traditionalist as opposed to maybe Francis or Gottfried who were, you

00:17:10.440 would qualify more as paleoconservatives.

00:17:12.880 Obviously they both opposed the direction that the conservative movement was taking.

00:17:17.380 Both of the, both of these groups were canceled out of the conservative movement, but what

00:17:22.280 was the distinction between their strategies that you feel set them apart?

00:17:26.360 Yeah.

00:17:26.500 So that's a good point.

00:17:27.280 So like, you know, people like Russell Kirk and while Roger Scruton is British, I would,

00:17:34.200 I would consider the way that he writes and things about things to be really similar, you

00:17:38.240 know, just sort of a European version of, of Russell Kirk, but I think that they had this

00:17:42.880 mentality, this understanding of politics that is very helpful.

00:17:47.300 And I think that they were pro-Burke, that is they opposed revolutionary politics.

00:17:52.220 They opposed universalism.

00:17:53.940 They opposed this instinct, um, that characterized the French revolution.

00:17:58.480 So they had very much a, a very helpful way of approaching politics.

00:18:03.400 And the meaning of conservatism was basically cherished by them in a way that was not descriptive

00:18:09.260 of the neoconservatives, which had much more of a Jacobin or revolutionary or universalist

00:18:14.820 instinct.

00:18:15.460 I think the neoconservatives are much less conservative than the traditionalists.

00:18:19.800 The difference between the traditionalists and the paleoconservatives, I think, um, has

00:18:26.000 much more to do with their understanding of what time it is in the West.

00:18:30.480 You know, when I, when I read the traditionalists, they have this very much, this mentality of

00:18:35.740 the perennial good, you know, the things that can basically transcend the moment that we can

00:18:40.280 reach way back into our Western heritage, you know, whether we emphasize, you know, Christendom

00:18:45.380 or whether we emphasize, you know, Greek political thought or Roman culture, you know, there's

00:18:50.400 something that transcends the moment.

00:18:52.180 And if we emphasize those things, there's always something there for us to grasp the

00:18:57.180 paleoconservatives.

00:18:58.340 And by the way, I think Paul Gottfried was the one that coined that phrase, but they were

00:19:02.420 much more confrontational.

00:19:04.520 They recognize that Edmund Burke was not listened to the traditionalists in the 1940s and fifties

00:19:10.560 were not listened to, and so therefore we have to react accordingly.

00:19:14.260 We can't pretend like there's this revolution coming down the road that's soon about to

00:19:18.860 take us over.

00:19:19.600 We need to consolidate our own appreciation for traditional institutions, but rather they

00:19:25.320 think that if you want to identify the revolution, you have to look in the rear view mirror because

00:19:30.120 it already came and it already went.

00:19:32.480 And therefore all of our institutions have been captured.

00:19:35.340 All of the most important aspects of American socio-cultural and political life are already occupied

00:19:42.100 by the enemies of Heritage America.

00:19:45.080 And so the paleoconservatives realized that you couldn't have any conservative disposition.

00:19:49.820 We couldn't act like Edmund Burke anymore because we'd already been taken over.

00:19:54.120 We didn't listen to the warnings of those who warned against the Jacobins and the Jacobins

00:19:58.780 therefore captured everything.

00:20:00.660 All of the things that we hold dear, the media, the arts, the educational institutions, the

00:20:06.400 corporations, the entire managerial system, this private public conglomeration of interest

00:20:13.880 groups had already weeded out Heritage America.

00:20:16.840 Anything, any residues from the old world had already been taken over.

00:20:20.720 And therefore the paleoconservatives said that we can't have a conservative mentality, but

00:20:25.780 instead we need a counter-revolutionary mentality or what I call the insurgent demeanor.

00:20:31.240 Yeah, I think that's critical.

00:20:32.640 I, of course, have talked about this as well, how critical it is for conservatives to understand

00:20:37.520 that all these warnings about, oh, no, you're going to be past the point of no return.

00:20:42.720 At some point, you're going to be past the point of no return.

00:20:44.960 Well, you can't warn about that for 50 years straight and then pretend you didn't go past

00:20:48.640 that point, right?

00:20:49.460 At some point, you have to say, OK, no, we went beyond it.

00:20:53.620 And now that means there has to be a shift in our understanding of the scenario.

00:20:57.140 It's not that I don't believe in these principles or that I don't understand the value of a

00:21:02.620 constitution or these institutions that you're trying to protect.

00:21:06.080 I'm just letting you know that no matter how long you stand at this grave, the person

00:21:11.420 inside it will be dead.

00:21:12.600 Right.

00:21:12.840 And so at some point we have to deal with reality as it is.

00:21:16.640 So I do.

00:21:17.620 I definitely want to get into the mentality shift because that's a big part of your article

00:21:21.360 as well.

00:21:21.800 And I think the critical part because it's something that people need to hear over and

00:21:25.020 over again about how critical it is to shift the mentality and importantly, the strategy

00:21:29.860 attached to it.

00:21:31.040 But before we talk about that, you also mentioned the role.

00:21:34.740 So you've always been picky about your produce, but now you find yourself checking every label

00:21:39.140 to make sure it's Canadian.

00:21:41.200 So be it.

00:21:42.260 At Sobeys, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first.

00:21:46.540 Restrictions apply.

00:21:47.500 See in store or online for details.

00:21:51.600 That the propositional nation plays in this.

00:21:55.100 And I think that's critical because I think it's very difficult.

00:21:57.920 You know, you talk about heritage America, and I think it's very difficult because so

00:22:02.000 many Americans, even on the right, many conservatives in the mainstream movement, people who are,

00:22:07.200 you know, think of themselves as passionate conservatives have a hard time of understanding

00:22:11.340 America as anything other than freedom and liberty.

00:22:14.700 Right.

00:22:15.080 Like we've got we've got a set of principles.

00:22:17.140 We wrote them down on paper at one point.

00:22:19.180 And anybody who raises their hand and says, yeah, that's me.

00:22:22.580 Well, then that that's and even if they don't, even if they just walk in and at some point,

00:22:26.820 you know, get amnesty.

00:22:28.220 Well, then they have a piece of paper and that's America now.

00:22:30.920 And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about that introduction of the idea of the

00:22:35.120 propositional nation and how that has worked to undermine what would have been a more traditional

00:22:39.740 right wing understanding of what America is and how that provides continuity.

00:22:43.920 I think this was one of the most fundamental, I want to say contributions, but that makes

00:22:49.740 it sound positive.

00:22:50.560 But one of the fundamental elements of the new right was this idea that the meaning of

00:22:55.180 all of America's experience and its documents and the phrases that built up the mythos of

00:23:01.140 what America was were basically universalized in the 20th century after World War II.

00:23:07.160 And so these very things that once defined Americans as inheritors of, you know, basically

00:23:14.840 Anglo-Saxon Europe, they were basically they saw themselves as prolonging or applying in more

00:23:21.840 consistent ways or protecting their rights as British citizens, you know, at the very beginning.

00:23:27.840 But then that would expand out a little bit.

00:23:29.700 But they saw themselves as inheriting something that was part of who they were as a people.

00:23:34.640 And so therefore, it made no sense to them to think of concepts like rights and just their

00:23:43.480 whole way of life.

00:23:44.880 You know, human rights is a big one today.

00:23:48.020 The Bill of Rights, we always speak in terms of their particular liberties and their particular

00:23:52.560 institutions.

00:23:53.920 And what happens when you universalize them is you sever them from the very real connection

00:23:59.800 that they used to have with a culture.

00:24:01.840 And when you sever that relationship and you universalize it, then the meaning of America

00:24:07.920 in the 20th century basically became this conglomeration of abstractions or propositions.

00:24:14.420 And anybody who adheres to those propositions or abstractions can become an American in equal

00:24:22.320 footing as any other American whose parents or grandparents had been here for seven, eight

00:24:27.200 generations.

00:24:27.800 And so therefore, since you're on equal footing, it makes no sense to, you know, talk in terms

00:24:32.940 of us as a people with a specific heritage or a specific way of doing things that we inherited

00:24:39.180 from our fathers.

00:24:40.140 But rather, it's something that anybody around the world can claim belongs to them as well.

00:24:45.360 And so you have this new meaning of America based on the universalization of phrases and

00:24:52.080 rhetoric, rhetorical framing.

00:24:53.960 I think that describes the new right.

00:24:57.240 And it therefore became something that could apply to anybody around the world.

00:25:00.760 And therefore, it made no sense to distinguish between cultures coming in or distinguish between

00:25:05.860 cultures that were already here.

00:25:07.660 Because as long as somebody has sent it to the proposition, that made them an American in

00:25:12.740 equal standing.

00:25:13.420 And you continue to chip away at this old way of looking at politics, which is, you know,

00:25:22.340 the continuity over time of peoples to live their lives as their fathers had lived them.

00:25:27.960 And, you know, for them to do that as prolonging their heritage, as being conduits between their

00:25:34.760 parents' generation and their children's generation.

00:25:37.200 That's what a very conservative way of looking at things.

00:25:39.840 But when you sever that dynamic and you instead make everything about individuals assenting to

00:25:44.860 propositions, you completely change the character of the American nation without changing the

00:25:51.580 rhetorical framing of it.

00:25:52.860 And so it was kind of people were tricked into it, basically.

00:25:56.400 You know, you have things like, you know, the Bill of Rights.

00:25:59.340 And the Bill of Rights belonged to the people who wrote that.

00:26:02.400 And if you look at the preamble to the Constitution, it was written for them and their posterity.

00:26:07.600 But now you can't think in terms of them and their posterity.

00:26:10.400 You have to think in terms of anybody who has sensed.

00:26:12.540 And so by keeping the rhetorical framing, but universalizing the concepts, you've basically

00:26:18.100 initiated a revolution against Heritage America and be on behalf of this new imperial universalist

00:26:25.380 America that we're now seeing the poison, you know, come to fruition.

00:26:29.680 Yeah.

00:26:30.240 One of my favorite things to do with this, whenever someone engages in this kind of propositional

00:26:35.300 nation discussion, like, oh, it's just assenting to a Cree.

00:26:38.240 It's like, OK, well, what happens when they renounce it?

00:26:40.940 Like, what happens when this person speaks out against America?

00:26:42.980 They lose their citizenship, right?

00:26:44.920 No, no, no, no, of course not.

00:26:46.280 OK, so what is the what does this mean?

00:26:47.940 Right.

00:26:48.400 And the answer is nothing.

00:26:49.360 It's completely an empty shibboleth for advancing a revolution.

00:26:54.340 And many conservatives have basically become stalwart defenders of a revolution that was

00:26:59.640 sold to them under in the cloak, in the disguise of, like you said, the rhetoric of the founders.

00:27:05.620 They thought that they were supporting the vision of the founders, but they didn't understand

00:27:09.060 the vision of the founders.

00:27:09.940 And so instead, they ended up buying a revolution lock, stock and barrel and just, you know,

00:27:14.620 painting some stars and stripes on the side of it.

00:27:16.740 So I wonder, we obviously we know that this is a powerful group.

00:27:23.700 We've talked a little bit about the dynamics, obviously, of power and why it wants to sell

00:27:27.620 out the middle.

00:27:28.400 But you would think that at some point there would still be a constituency for this large,

00:27:33.440 competent, successful class of people who contribute to society.

00:27:39.100 But we've both already said that the elites sold out these people, right?

00:27:42.820 Not that they voted for, but the elites were willing to.

00:27:44.840 What was the incentive structure that has put so much of the conservative movement in the

00:27:49.960 mindset where, well, really, I should be selling out the very people who are going to make

00:27:55.120 my country functional?

00:27:56.660 I mean, obviously, that's a suicide pact in the long run.

00:27:59.720 What what what incentive made them line up this way?

00:28:03.860 You know, that's it.

00:28:04.360 I think that's a very complex set of answers to that question.

00:28:08.080 You know, I would emphasize a couple of things, you know, one, this is like the libertarian,

00:28:14.300 you know, background coming out.

00:28:15.900 But I really think, you know, there's corruption in central banking and the corruption of the

00:28:19.700 money, you know, things like that, I think are very important to talk about.

00:28:22.820 But I actually think the entire the logic of the civil rights movement and the logic of the

00:28:28.980 civil rights, the new constitution, as Christopher Caldwell describes it, basically it created

00:28:34.320 an incentive structure where almost by definition, you couldn't see middle Americans as being

00:28:41.980 the victims of anything.

00:28:43.420 And if they weren't the victims of anything, then you couldn't use administrative law and

00:28:47.200 you couldn't use administrative mechanisms in order to provide solutions for them as victims.

00:28:53.940 So anybody who wasn't part of Heritage America could basically claim victim status in some ways.

00:28:59.420 And we can see today there's always a new victim group popping up because there's the logic built

00:29:04.300 into the civil rights movement that anything can be claimed to be the result of some perceived

00:29:10.140 injustice.

00:29:11.420 And therefore, you can utilize administrative precedent, administrative, you know, grants and

00:29:17.720 infrastructure and resources and mechanisms.

00:29:20.720 You can use that to heal whatever, you know, victim group has been, you know, victimized or

00:29:27.580 oppressed by basically Heritage America.

00:29:30.660 It's never the elites that are oppressing people.

00:29:32.480 It's always actually the Heritage Americans, their way of life and their things that they,

00:29:37.140 you know, stand for.

00:29:38.600 Those are the very oppressive institutions.

00:29:40.720 And so you have this dynamic where at first it was claimed to be, you know, African Americans

00:29:46.940 or, you know, and then it was, you know, transformed to claim, you know, outside of that, you know,

00:29:52.140 you could have, you know, people from other parts of the world, you know, the third world,

00:29:55.940 like, you know, the southeastern China, you could even have now different sexual classes,

00:30:02.260 groups of people claim victim status, and you continue to build onto that.

00:30:06.220 And what you realize is the only ones standing against that are the Heritage Americans.

00:30:10.480 And therefore, it's actually in everybody's best interest, including the elites and including

00:30:14.480 the victims of society to liquidate Heritage Americans, because they're the ones that are

00:30:19.480 getting in the way of the full emancipation and, you know, drive for equality that all

00:30:24.880 of these other minority groups talked about.

00:30:27.480 And so actually, the Heritage Americans are hurdles in the quest for justice.

00:30:31.640 And therefore, it's not only that they shouldn't get any special favor from the federal government,

00:30:35.520 but actually that they need to be liquidated.

00:30:37.320 Their entire way of life and culture needs to be decimated, because you can't have a new

00:30:42.480 constitution if they're still attached to the old one.

00:30:46.200 Yeah, and you can see this is it's so sad.

00:30:49.280 It's so slavish that the conservatives are locked into this as well.

00:30:52.820 Kevin McCarthy saying, oh, well, the Democratic Party looks more like the real America, right?

00:30:57.700 Even the people who are supposed to actually stand up for Heritage Americans want to replace

00:31:02.580 them.

00:31:02.820 They want to get rid of them.

00:31:03.660 They're embarrassed that they have to represent these people and they can't wait to swap them

00:31:08.460 out for a constituency that the New York Times would be more likely to praise them for.

00:31:13.360 You know, the first thing whenever a new minority and whenever a new special group is created,

00:31:17.940 the conservative movement doesn't push back against it.

00:31:20.560 They just rush to go get their own version of that.

00:31:22.480 Let's go grab some Blair Whites or something.

00:31:24.760 We've got to get the new conservative trans person, right?

00:31:28.260 That's the only thing they can think of to validate their position is to buy deeply into

00:31:33.520 the revolution, not in any way to oppose it.

00:31:37.140 And that really brings us to the mentality shift, because like you said, you're at this point now

00:31:41.800 where you're well through the looking glass.

00:31:44.060 All the all the easy, you know, off ramps are well behind us.

00:31:48.100 And now we're in the situation where all of these people in the middle, all of these

00:31:53.380 radical middle Americans have lost all power, right?

00:31:56.860 They have no institutions.

00:31:58.540 No one is standing up for them.

00:31:59.980 Jeremy Carl does a great job in his new book, The Unprotected Class, talking about basically

00:32:05.780 how the one group you can't find on any college campus, any elite campus is a middle American.

00:32:12.020 You can find you can find many minorities.

00:32:14.520 You can find white students who are linked to the liberal ruling elite, but you can't find

00:32:19.880 anyone from Oklahoma.

00:32:22.080 And so increasingly, these are people without any access to institutions, any access to power.

00:32:27.700 And you talk about this, the piece, how Sam Francis envisioned the idea of the revolution

00:32:33.820 from the middle, how we need to, how people who are completely devoid of these institutional,

00:32:39.520 this institutional apparatus can find a way to fight back when there's really no one in

00:32:45.560 the elite that's currently championing.

00:32:46.980 Yeah.

00:32:48.220 So this, this is the thing.

00:32:49.820 And what, what Sam Francis hints at or says explicitly is that what, what they need is

00:32:55.400 sort of a class consciousness, you know, in a way, you know, not a, and I wouldn't even

00:33:00.240 describe this as economic, you know, I think a lot of like suburban whites are very taken

00:33:04.920 over by the liberal revolution as well.

00:33:07.320 So, so it's not even, it's not even like economic, you know, like it's actually much

00:33:11.580 more of a, who do you represent?

00:33:14.500 What way of life do you represent?

00:33:15.880 And coming together along this, uh, and it's sort of a version of identity politics.

00:33:20.860 I don't think it needs to be like, um, racially essentialist, but it definitely needs to be,

00:33:26.460 um, correlated with those who have this instinct in this demeanor for those that have their

00:33:34.680 roots here in America.

00:33:35.960 And since we're the only group of people as middle Americans or as heritage Americans

00:33:41.220 who are, um, basically being led onto our cultural death in order to confront the revolution,

00:33:47.980 we actually need to have some sort of counter-revolutionary consciousness.

00:33:52.540 We need to recognize ourselves as those who represent, uh, the, the way of life of our

00:33:59.000 grandparents and great grandparents and those who, you know, came before and blazed the trail

00:34:03.480 and settled this country.

00:34:04.660 We need to think of ourselves as their heirs and therefore, you know, what they did for

00:34:09.980 us generations ago, we're doing, uh, in their honor, but also for the sake of those who come

00:34:16.720 after us as heritage Americans.

00:34:18.500 And so this, this sort of recognition of not what propositions do we assent to, but who we

00:34:24.940 are and what culture we will aspire to preserve and to reassert, not just preserve.

00:34:30.500 Cause that's the, that was the problem with conservatism is it attempted to hold the fort

00:34:34.800 down.

00:34:35.100 But what we need is a reaffirmation of those things or reassertion.

00:34:39.180 And that's what makes it counter-revolutionary because we're not just hiding in the caves,

00:34:42.960 but we're actually saying, this is who we are.

00:34:46.200 This is the way that we want to live.

00:34:47.780 And we're willing to wield power in defense of ourselves.

00:34:50.860 And I think that's what it means to have a counter-revolutionary consciousness.

00:34:54.640 So what are the practical applications?

00:34:58.080 We have an understanding now of like how you should understand yourselves, the shift in

00:35:02.380 mentality, but what is, what are the boots on the ground reality look like?

00:35:07.100 If you don't have access to any of these institutions, if entryism doesn't work because the people who

00:35:13.300 are already in these establishments are perfectly aware of the long march of institutions because

00:35:17.720 they did it.

00:35:18.420 And they're certainly not going to leave the door open for you.

00:35:21.280 We have the Chris Ruffo model and I have a lot of respect for Chris.

00:35:25.220 He's been on the show.

00:35:26.480 He's obviously the most effective advocate for a lot of the things that are happening on

00:35:32.540 the conservative move right now.

00:35:33.700 One of the most powerful activists we've seen on the right for a long time, but his version

00:35:38.200 of this seems to be kind of to like brute force the institution doors back open.

00:35:42.600 And then there are others who think that they should kind of sneak in the back door.

00:35:46.540 But what, what was the, what was Francis's idea?

00:35:49.740 How, how did he think that you could reassert power?

00:35:53.240 Yeah, let me, let me just set this up by saying that this is not, most people don't have this

00:35:58.540 type of thing within their grasp, you know, so everybody, you know, people, people are

00:36:02.100 frustrated.

00:36:02.560 People listening to the show, they want to know desperately, what do we do?

00:36:06.240 Do we run for school board?

00:36:07.700 What do we do?

00:36:08.340 And I would answer, you know, everybody has its own circle and its own way of doing things.

00:36:13.620 And for some people, the best you could possibly do is to live well, work hard and have children.

00:36:20.200 Some people are set up to be in local politics, but there are those who can live lives as sort

00:36:26.660 of a vanguard.

00:36:27.620 And they actually have the opportunities to think 50, 60 years down the road, because that's

00:36:32.600 what we have to do right now.

00:36:33.720 This is not a four or five year project.

00:36:36.420 This is a 50, 60 year long project.

00:36:38.620 When you think about the post-Marxist left, like in this, in the fifties, you know, during

00:36:44.740 fascism in Italy and during, you know, even in America, you know, the new left was not

00:36:51.040 popular.

00:36:51.640 They had to sit and they had to work out, how do we as revolutionaries living at the margins

00:36:57.220 of society, how do we capture the institutions?

00:37:00.260 They had to grapple with these things.

00:37:01.740 And I think that we need to grapple with them as well.

00:37:04.440 This is not an immediate term project.

00:37:06.000 This is not about voting Trump in, this is not even about voting a Pat Buchanan in.

00:37:10.580 This is about how do we think in long term?

00:37:14.540 Because if, if the left, if their way of life and if their revolution is inherently fragile,

00:37:21.440 and I think that it is, I don't think it's consistent with what it means to be a human

00:37:25.680 being and what it means to have an authentic culture, but they're constantly having to revolutionize

00:37:31.500 society.

00:37:32.080 That's just the nature of the left.

00:37:33.380 Then there are going to be opportunities to provide stability in an age of instability.

00:37:38.100 And so the way that Francis dealt with this is he looked deeply at the communist agitator

00:37:43.640 Antonio Gramsci.

00:37:45.280 And Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned by Mussolini in fascist Italy as, you know, he was a Marxist

00:37:50.800 and someone who wanted to basically capture the institutions in the West.

00:37:54.120 And he realized in the course of his imprisonment, in the course of his own failure, that they

00:38:01.460 could not do things the way that the Bolsheviks did.

00:38:03.840 They could not just simply capture the reins of state power like they were able to do.

00:38:08.060 Once, once Russia was taken over by the Bolsheviks, they won.

00:38:12.240 They defeated everybody.

00:38:13.340 It wasn't like that in the West.

00:38:15.080 In the West, you had much more of this cultural hegemonic strength that bolstered the ability

00:38:20.300 for Western culture and American culture specifically to survive any formal capture of power.

00:38:27.460 They therefore needed to create this stronghold of institutions.

00:38:31.460 And everybody knows about the long march to the institutions, the way they did it that way.

00:38:35.140 But that was actually their backup plan.

00:38:37.000 Their immediate plan was to basically create parallels.

00:38:40.120 They wanted to create groups of people and be their own vanguard on the left and slowly

00:38:45.060 build up alternative ways of life that the American hegemonic culture couldn't compete

00:38:51.040 with, you know, because they had this idea of a left wing utopia that was basically more

00:38:56.160 appealing than what was going on in the 1940s America.

00:39:00.280 The problem was the reason that Gramsci and other communist revolutionaries failed at that

00:39:05.160 is because the base, the base, the core of American culture was still at that time much more

00:39:12.240 conservative.

00:39:13.280 They had no interest in participating in their alternative lifestyles and their parallels.

00:39:18.940 And I think even though the masses have been revolutionized and liberalized today, I still

00:39:24.940 think that that basic instinct exists in America.

00:39:28.680 It's one of the few places in the West.

00:39:30.180 I think if you look at Germany and France and England and all, you know, Scotland and all

00:39:35.280 these other places, you realize that the core of American population is still very, especially

00:39:43.700 in flyover America, is still very conservative.

00:39:46.640 And I think that they are radicalizing on cultural lenses.

00:39:49.440 They are becoming much more, much less enthusiastic about, you know, affirming gay rights or whatever,

00:39:55.760 you know, they need to affirm to fit in to polite society in America.

00:39:59.840 I think that they're becoming radicalized and they're willing to use state power in whatever

00:40:04.060 way they can get ahold of it.

00:40:05.300 And so I would say the best way in a meaningful way is, is to organize and it's going to take

00:40:12.660 decades to organize, but you need to be radicalizing your neighbor.

00:40:16.160 You need to be forming coalitions.

00:40:18.460 You need to be forming associations.

00:40:20.060 You need to be creating networks of strength.

00:40:22.500 You need to be convincing people that they don't need to depend on welfare because you at

00:40:26.780 the church can provide that.

00:40:27.920 You need to be thinking as a counter-revolutionary because this is the very mode of operation.

00:40:34.060 That the post-Marxist left, you know, thought of themselves as living on the margin.

00:40:38.740 They were completely unacceptable to polite society.

00:40:41.660 And yet somehow, 40 years later, they captured all the institutions.

00:40:44.980 So I would say that the core of the answer is not to, you know, become a professor.

00:40:50.080 I mean, if your path in life is to become a professor and you'll probably get fired,

00:40:54.960 but I would suggest creating parallels.

00:40:57.120 And, you know, you can, people do this all the time with, you know, monetary parallels

00:41:02.120 or there's all sorts of like online learning, but I'm talking about boots on the ground, moving

00:41:06.840 into the right position and taking over county level stuff.

00:41:10.080 There's, there's no reason why a county level, you know, counter-revolution cannot happen here.

00:41:16.160 I think about all the counties that I've visited in the last year and how red pill they are becoming

00:41:22.320 about how bad things are being run at the, at the state level, about the country level.

00:41:28.680 Like I think like, for instance, you know, Tennessee is a good example.

00:41:31.920 All these corporations moving into Nashville and how blue Nashville is becoming.

00:41:36.180 But at the county level in rural Tennessee, they're actually going the other direction.

00:41:40.220 And I think these are the opportunities that people need to look for.

00:41:43.480 Take over your counties and start telling, you know, state level, the state level apparatus.

00:41:48.560 No, we're not going to take your funds.

00:41:49.860 We're not interested in your subsidies.

00:41:51.000 We're going to survive on our own, start supporting each other.

00:41:53.880 And I think by creating these types of parallels, what you're playing into is the very backbone of

00:42:00.520 American cultural life that Gramsci and his revolutionaries were unable to capture themselves.

00:42:05.620 And I think since those things still exist, we as counter-revolutionaries on the right can

00:42:11.820 leverage them, radicalize them, and wield them eventually against state level power.

00:42:17.440 I think that's right.

00:42:18.920 You know, I advocate for something very similar in my book, The Total State.

00:42:22.720 And I think that that really is key as someone who lived in Florida under the beneficence of,

00:42:28.760 you know, Governor DeSantis during everything that was the COVID pandemic.

00:42:33.960 Like, I recognize the drastic difference of the stories I heard from New York and California

00:42:39.440 and all these other places where life was just absolutely shut down and insane.

00:42:43.820 And after the first month or two here in Florida, things were pretty much just normal, right?

00:42:49.160 And that all comes down to the fact that you had, you know, a governor and you had a legislature

00:42:54.420 and you had counties that were willing to just say, no, we don't care.

00:42:57.900 We're not doing this and you can't make us.

00:43:00.140 Same thing when we saw what happened with some of the gun legislation in Illinois, I believe it was,

00:43:07.500 where the state's trying to basically ban guns and the sheriffs just say, no, we're just not enforcing this law.

00:43:14.320 This law is unconstitutional.

00:43:16.620 And so people often doubt how critical it can be to just have these very basic firewalls.

00:43:23.240 And I should say, when I say basic, I don't mean that it's easy.

00:43:26.460 It takes a lot of work.

00:43:27.320 Like you said, it's a generational project of organization, informing people, making people understand what time it is,

00:43:33.720 making them understand how radically important it is for them to take action and make sure that they build this bulwark.

00:43:40.260 But just having these things in place can be really critical and they can completely change the life for you and your family when these kind of things hit.

00:43:47.820 Can I just jump in real quick?

00:43:50.680 I know we have listener questions, but as an example, let's say a county level, let's say there was like a pride parade and they wanted to do this.

00:43:58.600 And a county level group said, no, we're actually not going to allow that on our streets because it's completely inconsistent with the well-being and strategic or the cultural stability of our county.

00:44:08.540 Let's just say they made that argument.

00:44:09.580 What the state would do is they would start they would probably respond by withholding funds and they say, fine, we're not going to fund your developments.

00:44:16.900 We're not going to give you subsidies and grants and stuff like that.

00:44:19.780 What what the counter revolutionaries have to do is say, fine, we don't want your money.

00:44:24.280 See, this is this is how they get these county levels to participate is they hand out millions of dollars in development subsidies and all kinds of stuff.

00:44:32.100 What it's going to take is people saying we're willing to sacrifice the cheap money and the cheap wealth effect just to survive and keep our cultural way of life.

00:44:41.380 Those are the things that we have to do, too, is we have to tell the state, no, we're not interested in your participation.

00:44:47.460 We would rather figure it out ourselves than take part in your struggle sessions.

00:44:52.780 That's exactly right.

00:44:53.420 This is the leash that the federal government uses the states and states use to county and locals is that that that pyramid of funding is what really makes sure that they can dictate things down to these levels.

00:45:04.280 And if you can find a way, if you're willing to make the sacrifices and to put in the work to go ahead and cut that spigot off, there's very little outside of actually like sending the National Guard down to enforce something that these people can actually do.

00:45:18.000 And you're just willing to stand up there. So the one thing that pushback that I consistently get when I float this strategy, and I'm sure you've heard it, too, is like eventually, sure, OK, you build your super based world down in your county or in your state.

00:45:32.440 But then at some point, the federal government or the state government says, oh, based world's a problem.

00:45:37.260 We're just going to go knock over your sandcastle. So if you know, unless you're building some kind of radical militia, then you're just wasting your time.

00:45:46.120 Right. Because if you're building a more functional society, if these guys ultimately decide that they don't want it to be there anymore, they can just go over and knock that over.

00:45:55.000 And the thing that, you know, I always point them to is I got a buddy, Ernst Van Zell and in South Africa.

00:46:00.380 And he, you know, he helps to work with Afroform and they set up these parallel institutions there.

00:46:06.540 Whenever anyone brings that up to me, he just says, OK, but in the meantime, like my society is run better.

00:46:12.540 Like my family, my friends, my people get to live in a better society.

00:46:16.440 And maybe this highly incompetent state will eventually come for this stuff, but maybe they won't.

00:46:21.740 And if I don't set this up, if I don't create this, then no one else will.

00:46:26.180 What do you say to people who say, well, eventually the government is just going to come knock over your sandcastle?

00:46:31.680 So I actually what I what I what I would answer with is I think that that assumes that there is still legitimacy in the federal government.

00:46:40.560 And I think that people don't realize the extent to which delegitimization has characterized the last 10 years.

00:46:47.840 I think that's what Trump is all about.

00:46:49.440 And I think that instead of sending troops in to knock over your sandcastle, what they're actually going to do is they're going to blow a lot of hot air, which is what they did with Abbott on the on the border.

00:46:59.280 And I think calling their bluff is a much more way to spark.

00:47:05.840 I mean, well, first of all, we can get to the issue of martyrdom.

00:47:08.940 Martyrdom is a very powerful aspect of our cause as well.

00:47:12.640 But I think that more people stand up and call their bluff.

00:47:15.540 What you're going to see is that the federal government has lost the legitimacy and moral authority to make threats like that.

00:47:22.560 And I don't think that they'll pull it off.

00:47:24.220 And if they do pull it off, that's when you get the martyr effect.

00:47:27.440 If they really do come in and you're willing to sacrifice for your cause, they're going to stomp one spider and let loose thousands more.

00:47:35.440 Because I don't think that they have the legitimacy to do that anymore.

00:47:38.300 It's not 1980.

00:47:39.600 You know, we're not the most powerful country in the world.

00:47:42.700 I mean, people know that the entire structure of the American mythos, you know, the idea that the American regime is sort of at the height and zenith of world history.

00:47:54.220 I think that's coming apart. And I think that people see the United States as much more of a bother in their life and something that's not necessary.

00:48:02.240 And I think calling their bluff is going to be much easier than people anticipate.

00:48:05.580 Yeah, this is like the January 6th or Trump trial effect, right?

00:48:10.020 In one instance, you can say, oh, well, they're cracking down.

00:48:13.040 They're punishing these people with jacronian punishments.

00:48:15.580 They're trying to eliminate the political opposition.

00:48:17.800 And yeah, all of that's true.

00:48:19.020 That's an attempt to flex that power.

00:48:20.900 But at the same time, what they're doing is sacrificing the legitimacy of all of these institutions in order to crush what is relatively small beings.

00:48:29.100 And so when they do this, they end up putting all of their social, the social fabric that's left, all of the air of legitimacy and power, the political formula that holds them together and gives them that legitimacy all starts to be called into question.

00:48:46.740 And yeah, it might give you some security for a moment.

00:48:49.260 Like you said, you might get to stomp one or two spiders.

00:48:51.880 But what you end up doing is destroying the system that was really holding the wider power base in place.

00:48:57.820 And once you do that, it's only a matter of time before these things really start falling apart.

00:49:02.820 All right, guys.

00:49:03.360 Well, we have a number of questions from the audience I want to have time to get to.

00:49:06.940 So we're going to switch over to that.

00:49:08.220 But before we go to the questions of the people, CJ, where can people find all of your excellent work?

00:49:13.780 At ContraMordor on Twitter is the easiest way to find me.

00:49:16.740 I have a sub stack too, but just follow me on Twitter and then you can see all my updates at ContraMordor.

00:49:22.600 Excellent.

00:49:23.120 All right.

00:49:24.420 So Thuggo says,

00:49:26.300 Were the post-war new right basically neoliberal corporatists?

00:49:34.180 I wouldn't call them.

00:49:35.540 I mean, corporatists, like, do they represent the corporations?

00:49:38.480 Not necessarily.

00:49:39.560 Are they corporatists in the sense that they advocate for the fusion of, you know, capital and state?

00:49:45.320 There's some of that too.

00:49:46.480 But I think they were much more ideological than anything.

00:49:49.660 I think that they were much more interested in strengthening the American regime for the sake of the Cold War and liberal hegemony in Europe.

00:49:57.540 I think that they saw the function of America as basically needing to shore up Europe after World War II.

00:50:04.340 And they were much more interested in ideology than they were in any economic relations.

00:50:08.700 Of course, it's very profitable to run an empire as well.

00:50:11.760 So there's that aspect.

00:50:13.200 But a lot of that's just rent seeking.

00:50:15.460 But I think a lot of it was basically just this attempt to create this Western super state that fulfilled their own understanding of historical development.

00:50:25.000 Tiny stupid demon says, yes, the issue I've had with conservatives for some time is that is that the thing they're trying to conserve does not exist.

00:50:35.220 But people continue to hold on to their delusions because losing them hurts.

00:50:41.180 How how this is something that I think is important.

00:50:44.200 I think it's important for people to communicate what time it is without completely scaring off legitimate middle Americans.

00:50:55.000 Heritage Americans who care about this.

00:50:57.080 I think the mistake that many people on like the online right make is they want to come in and just say, I'm here to shatter all of your dreams and tell you that the revolution is upon us.

00:51:07.200 But I found that that is a strategy that does not necessarily play well with a lot of people who would otherwise be your allies.

00:51:14.420 How should people approach the conservative, the average conservative to let them know that, yes, many of these things are no longer able to be conserved.

00:51:23.700 But there is a connection to the past that allows a continuity to what they love.

00:51:28.860 I would emphasize the frustrations that they're already feeling.

00:51:32.040 The thing that we have to our advantage is that we don't have to we don't have to muster up or we don't have to conjure up some frustration that they that we can apply to them.

00:51:41.700 They're already frustrated.

00:51:42.880 They already know that there's a war being declared on their world and their memories and the things that they cherish.

00:51:48.840 They cherish these things at the sentimental level, not at the rationalistic one.

00:51:53.260 And so we can play into that.

00:51:54.280 There was a great debate in during the immigration debates.

00:51:58.000 I guess it was in the 70s with Enoch Powell.

00:52:00.240 I'm sure some people have seen this, but he was describing the future of England as being extremely damaging for those who have a thousand year history in England.

00:52:10.720 And he was accused of conjuring up and making, you know, and creating frustrations in people.

00:52:16.400 And he constantly said, no, I'm just their echo.

00:52:19.260 I'm just I'm just being there for them to I'm a conduit, you know, a mechanism through which they can express their frustrations.

00:52:28.720 Their frustrations already exist.

00:52:30.460 They already know that there's a war being declared on them.

00:52:32.860 So the solution is to play into that, to leverage that, to fuel that fire so that they are willing to look for other alternatives.

00:52:41.120 And at the same time, you're not asserting some utopian vision of the new world, but you're really asserting the reinvigoration of the things that they love and the heritage that they wish they could see praised again.

00:52:53.580 So that's what we're doing is we're we're leveraging the frustration that already exists and we're asserting a heritage that is deep within our souls.

00:53:01.400 Yeah, it's interesting when you go back and watch Enoch Powell, you know, you've been told the story about this fire breathing dragon.

00:53:09.080 And when you see him on many of these late night shows, the hosts are even befuddled because they expect this wild eyed guy.

00:53:17.080 And really, he is just saying exactly what you're talking about.

00:53:19.720 Look, I'm not here saying anything new.

00:53:21.560 I'm just the echo.

00:53:22.400 I'm just the representation of what the people already know.

00:53:25.700 And so I'm not saying anything radical.

00:53:27.840 And that's the thing.

00:53:28.680 It's like in some ways it's radicalization.

00:53:31.400 Right. But in other ways, it's not radical at all.

00:53:33.760 It's simply a realization of what is true and that has taken people so long to remember or be allowed to say.

00:53:40.220 And that's what Trump did.

00:53:41.500 I said that's his greatest strength was just giving people the ability to recognize and say the things that they'd wanted to say for a very long time.

00:53:48.060 Exactly.

00:53:49.120 Scott Galloway says.

00:53:50.460 Scott Galloway had a viral rant recently where he made a very compelling argument for left populist economic focus, recost of housing, education, low wages.

00:54:04.640 Could this be co-opted by the right?

00:54:06.640 Yeah, that's that's a tough one.

00:54:09.100 Like, first of all, I would say when it comes to a culture war, you want to, you know, you've said this before, but we're in the looting the treasury phase of American decline.

00:54:19.840 And right. So so the point is not to uphold these ultimate principles of what it would be like.

00:54:25.540 You know, you know, how do we how do we come up with a system that's extremely principled and you can balance the budget and all these things?

00:54:31.380 But rather what you need to do is you need to work for those who are your fellow heritage Americans.

00:54:36.820 That's part of having a counterrevolutionary mindset.

00:54:40.340 So a good example of this would be like, OK, here's a good example of this.

00:54:43.640 Ron Paul. So Ron Paul, they when they did these budgets, you know, back when he was a congressman, you know, he would vote against he would vote against the money.

00:54:52.600 He'd vote against the budget, you know, because he didn't want to fund it with new taxes and new inflation, all this stuff.

00:54:57.760 But he would vote yes for the carve outs for his county, you know, and that's just you don't have to do it exactly like this.

00:55:04.620 But that's a good way of thinking about it. Look, since they're spending the money anyways, you might as well capture it.

00:55:09.920 So you might as well. So a good example of this would be like student loans.

00:55:13.060 Like I'm all for, you know, seizing the endowments of Harvard and other the other revolutionary institutions in America,

00:55:20.360 seizing their endowments, capturing the money that they use extremely inappropriately, extremely against our way of life,

00:55:28.620 using those funds to pay for the student loans of families.

00:55:33.880 And if you pay for the student loans of families and maybe you get more student loans paid off per child or something like this,

00:55:39.880 you're inevitably going to weigh the benefits of that system or that mechanism.

00:55:45.020 You're definitely, I mean, families are mostly those who are consistent with or adjacent to Heritage America.

00:55:51.480 So just start with things like that. You can benefit your own people.

00:55:54.920 I mean, you can't if you conjure up this utopian world where you'd capture money and then give it to your buddies,

00:56:00.320 you know, that wouldn't fly. But if you took money that's already been allocated,

00:56:04.780 that's being used for revolutionary purposes or for instance, if you if you can pull back,

00:56:10.640 you know, our military expansionism in the Middle East, like in Afghanistan or other place, Ukraine,

00:56:16.800 you know, all these other like wastes of money, you can take those funds and give it to like veterans, right?

00:56:22.200 That's money that's already being allocated. And by doing so, you're actually without even trying too hard,

00:56:28.100 giving it proportionately to Heritage Americans.

00:56:30.200 I mean, those are little things that we can do to think in terms of where are our enemies?

00:56:35.240 How are they using our money and how can we use those resources in a way that benefits our people?

00:56:42.400 Yeah, I really encourage people to abandon ideological thinking.

00:56:46.880 The whole point of this is you are here, like you said, to help Heritage Americans.

00:56:51.260 All right. What does that look like? Well, you want them to have housing they can afford.

00:56:55.380 You want them to be able to raise a family with a one person working.

00:57:00.680 You want these things. These are not leftist ideas.

00:57:03.500 These are healthy ideas for the people that you are trying to protect.

00:57:07.780 So don't worry about the ideological implications of every given policy.

00:57:13.040 Worry more about whether or not it benefits your friend, the people you're trying to protect.

00:57:17.100 Exactly.

00:57:17.320 And if the answer is yes, then, you know, engage in it.

00:57:20.220 The thing is, your enemies are operating on that standard while you're staying principled.

00:57:24.740 That's how the conservative movement lost.

00:57:27.220 Your enemies operate on identity politics and they've convinced you to operate on principle.

00:57:32.200 Who's going to win that fight?

00:57:33.860 And to be very clear, I have a principle and the principle is helping the people who are part of my group.

00:57:39.260 Like that's that's the principle.

00:57:41.160 Like and that's a good principle.

00:57:42.720 Like that's actually what you should have.

00:57:45.140 Your principle should not be some abstract ideology.

00:57:47.760 Your principle should be I would like to protect Americans.

00:57:50.220 I would like Americans to see the benefit of the taxes they pay.

00:57:54.060 I would like to see Americans have their borders closed.

00:57:57.220 I would like to see Americans be protected by their military.

00:58:00.460 Those are my principles.

00:58:01.680 It has nothing to my principles are not abstract economic ideologies.

00:58:05.320 My principles are grounded in a people in a place.

00:58:07.860 And rather than being grounded in, you know, whether or not they line up with some, you know, abstract university idea of any particular application of political science.

00:58:18.580 Florida Henry here says when Perot ran and predicted what has has happened to us, the Republicans ripped him viciously.

00:58:28.160 Agree.

00:58:28.940 Such cases.

00:58:29.860 Yeah.

00:58:30.040 Many such cases.

00:58:31.900 That's absolutely right.

00:58:32.940 But Florida Henry says what have conservatives conserved Trump got Roe versus Wade overturned, but he's not a conservative or even a Republican.

00:58:43.000 Yeah.

00:58:43.160 And I think that really does speak to the power, again, of non ideological thinking.

00:58:48.020 Trump walked in and he didn't know the rules.

00:58:49.620 Right.

00:58:49.860 He's not an ideologue.

00:58:51.280 He's not even really a Republican, but he walks in and he's like, all right, I'm a businessman.

00:58:55.160 I'm a salesman.

00:58:56.080 I want to sell myself to these guys.

00:58:57.920 What do they care about?

00:58:58.860 And then he did the unthinkable.

00:59:00.600 He just said what he thought they wanted to hear and in some cases did what he thought they wanted them to do.

00:59:06.720 And that's not what the conservative movement does.

00:59:08.480 It runs around screaming about like the, you know, the principles of the ideology that they have written down on the flow chart and do nothing about actually helping.

00:59:17.520 This is a good example.

00:59:19.060 This is a good example of how politics is more meaningful than just like ideology.

00:59:24.120 I mean, because it was the dynamics of politics that created a situation in which the Supreme Court could actually pull that off.

00:59:33.000 If it wasn't for politics, if it was only for ideology, Roe v. Wade would still be the law of the land.

00:59:39.720 Thuggo here says, we lost some big legislative battles, income tax, Federal Reserve, 2008 bailout, Civil Rights Act.

00:59:50.540 How do we proceed?

00:59:52.180 Yeah, obviously the weight of kind of just the law at this point is overwhelming for the right.

00:59:58.720 We're seeing some battles won.

01:00:01.060 I mean, we look at possibly the overturning of affirmative action.

01:00:05.000 We have that ruling, but does it actually get applied?

01:00:07.540 You know, these kind of things matter.

01:00:09.560 But what do conservatives do when, like you said, the overwhelming amount of legislative and judicial battles have gone against them?

01:00:17.380 And all of that, the stack of that is kind of weighing down on the movement.

01:00:21.080 Yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of what I was saying is creating a counter-revolutionary consciousness.

01:00:25.540 I mean, that is the best answer here.

01:00:27.740 You're not going to, you're not going to take back Harvard.

01:00:30.600 You're not going to take back Yale.

01:00:31.720 You're not going to take back the Department of Education.

01:00:33.440 What you're going to do is you're going to convince your fellow heritage Americans that they don't need those schools anymore, that we have our own way of doing things, that we're going to defend ourselves, that we're going to supply goods and services for ourselves, and we're not interested in the managerial system anymore.

01:00:49.220 I think that's ultimately the ethos, the instinct that needs to be developed and fostered.

01:00:54.820 Yeah, the only way to defeat the total state is to remove yourself from dependence on it.

01:00:59.180 That's really the ground on which you have to build everything else.

01:01:02.880 Cherub Kao says, Engel, thoughts on preventing national divorce with a recapture strategy?

01:01:08.900 Obviously, a lot of people on the right are advocates or think that national divorce is inevitable.

01:01:14.500 What are your thoughts on that?

01:01:15.760 I don't think it's possible.

01:01:17.380 I wouldn't counter-signal it, though.

01:01:19.740 I think that those movements can be leveraged and utilized.

01:01:22.660 I think that we can be friends with national divorce people.

01:01:25.700 I also don't think that we should make it a make-or-break thing that if you're not interested in it, you are banished from our momentum or something like that.

01:01:34.820 I think that they have good instincts.

01:01:37.860 I don't think it's very possible we're too interrelated for that, and there's too much going on.

01:01:42.800 I also don't think that the managerial elite are going to allow anything like that.

01:01:46.720 I don't want to spend too much bandwidth on stuff like that, but the power of nullification at the county level I think can be just as impactful because the managerial system at the national level, it really does depend on lower-level power being part of the tax farm.

01:02:05.680 It really does rely on them to participate, and so I don't think you need national divorce, but I also don't want to counter-signal my friends.

01:02:14.500 I think they are allies.

01:02:15.680 I think they are good people who have good instincts.

01:02:18.500 Obviously, there are some wacky libertarians involved, but they're just going to always be there, and there's nothing you can do about them.

01:02:24.720 So true.

01:02:26.320 Forge and Anvil says, the CJ guy seems like a good podcast guest.

01:02:30.840 Well, if you like him as a guest, you should check him out as a host.

01:02:33.380 Actually, CJ, make sure you plug your podcast.

01:02:35.560 You didn't do that.

01:02:36.820 Well, you did it for me, but I do Chronicles and Contramundum, but I know Forge and Anvil, and he's taking a pot shot at me because I bail on him for his podcast.

01:02:45.220 Oh, okay.

01:02:45.960 We really shade was being thrown.

01:02:47.700 Yes, yeah, and you got paid for it, too.

01:02:49.580 Yeah, we'll take it.

01:02:50.420 We'll take it.

01:02:51.040 All right.

01:02:51.340 Anyone else wants to throw an apple at CJ?

01:02:54.540 Now is your moment.

01:02:56.120 Cooper Weirdo says, calling someone stupid and telling them that their worldview is a lie doesn't work.

01:03:01.180 But when Yarvin is debating someone, to be fair, I think that actually does work sometimes.

01:03:05.760 But yeah, I hear you.

01:03:07.440 Let's see.

01:03:09.700 I'm going to say, I'm going to pronounce this very wrong.

01:03:11.800 Sorry.

01:03:12.500 Janelle Guevara.

01:03:14.120 Jackson says, is it possible for blacks to be heritage Americans if your family have been here since the 1700s, especially if you're traditional heritage culture?

01:03:24.340 Yeah, so I define heritage American as anyone whose mentality and their instincts are for the America as it was conceived in the 1700s, 1800s, even early 1900s.

01:03:42.180 And I think part of the mosaic of the American development as it existed is there was this clash of worlds with European settlers and the Native Americans and Southern, you know, South Americans, but Americans who lived in the South and the black culture there.

01:04:02.660 And I think that a lot of these people who, like a good example of this would be someone like Booker T. Washington.

01:04:08.640 There is this distinction that, you know, is made often in the South between, you know, the old black culture and the new black culture.

01:04:16.660 This new black culture that was kind of facilitated by the power elite in the 20th century has created a lot of damage for Americans and for, you know, for blacks in general.

01:04:27.800 And Thomas Sowell talks about all this, you know, the damage that the managerial system has had on them, but I don't define heritage American in a racially essentialist way.

01:04:38.040 I do think that there's a lot of correlation.

01:04:40.220 There were definitely Anglo institutions, Anglo instincts, Anglo culture that predominated the American scene.

01:04:46.960 But I think that there was some sort of integration between the European dominated settlers and, you know, some of these other sub cultures and subgroups on the margins, including Native Americans and black Americans.

01:05:01.220 So that's why I do say heritage American, because there is this older America.

01:05:05.880 I mean, there were tensions and struggles there, but that's part of our experience in history.

01:05:10.280 So I don't really have a racially essentialist view of things, but I very much do have a if you if you're if your instincts and your connections are pre Ellis Island or even post Ellis Island, but mostly pre Ellis Island, then you're a then you're a heritage American.

01:05:26.320 I think that's part of our the development and trajectory of the of American mosaic.

01:05:31.700 Yeah, there's a Clarence Thomas shaped plug in the dam that's holding back the destruction of heritage America.

01:05:38.520 I mean, the man is is basically got the Constitution or what's left of it aloft on his shoulders.

01:05:44.420 So, yeah, I think it's fair to call Clarence Thomas the heritage American, that kind of thing.

01:05:49.060 Yeah.

01:05:49.960 Jacob Zendel says Galloway completely omitted immigration.

01:05:55.000 Could this be a reformulation into a platform of net zero immigration, affordable housing and decimation of progressive education institutions?

01:06:04.420 Great guess.

01:06:04.940 Yeah, I don't really know Galloway, so I'm not familiar with what he said, but I think, yeah, that's I mean, this is already I mean, to be fair, this is what I talk about all the time.

01:06:14.400 Like these are these are issues that I'm hitting 24 seven.

01:06:17.580 So, yeah, do I think that this this platform is a good one?

01:06:21.320 Absolutely.

01:06:21.900 In fact, it's the one I've been doing my very best to forge as much as much as possible as I can on this show.

01:06:27.540 I don't I'm not don't know.

01:06:28.740 I'm not familiar with Galloway, but if he's saying the same thing, then, yeah, I think that's correct.

01:06:32.140 Yeah, I'm not familiar with him either.

01:06:35.420 So, yeah.

01:06:36.620 And then Robert Weisfeld says, can Italian Catholic American and or Jewish American asking for a friend become a heritage American?

01:06:45.780 Totally asking.

01:06:46.960 Totally OK, if not America first.

01:06:49.160 So, yes, America first double.

01:06:51.040 Yes.

01:06:51.260 So the point of using phrases like heritage American is I'm not I think we should get rid of the rationalism.

01:06:57.600 Like the point is not to go by every single person and look up his genetic makeup and then, you know, it's not a one drop rule scenario.

01:07:04.360 Yeah.

01:07:04.620 Yeah.

01:07:04.820 That's not how it works.

01:07:05.820 It's more of an ethos.

01:07:07.040 You know, it's more of a it's it's it's much broader than that.

01:07:10.240 You know, we don't need the problem.

01:07:12.520 This is this is actually how the left wins is they get you nailed down to these very precise definitions of things.

01:07:17.480 And you get so focused on this guy.

01:07:20.060 Yes, this guy.

01:07:20.700 No, that you actually lose the entire momentum of things.

01:07:25.260 So I think it's sort of a spectrum.

01:07:27.040 I think the the old British stock is like the ultimate heritage American.

01:07:32.720 And as you go out to Germany in France and, you know, out from there to, yes, Italians are part of that spectrum.

01:07:39.680 And then you get out even further to the third world at some point along the spectrum, it gets further too far away, but we don't need to have some rationalistic answer to things.

01:07:48.460 I think the Ellis Island immigration was bad for America.

01:07:51.500 I think it created the New Deal, the New Deal Democratic Party and all that.

01:07:56.540 But at this point, you know, the whole point of politics is to look at who your allies are and who your enemies are and to act accordingly.

01:08:03.200 Yeah, there's a there's a for people who are looking for more on this, the even the perennial traditionalists like Spangler and Evola talked about, you know, the understanding of nation as purely genetic as something that was a disaster, like that this is a component, but that there's a larger understanding of this as well.

01:08:23.240 So this is not some new revisionist, you know, conservative version of national identity or, you know, nationhood or peoplehood.

01:08:30.460 This is something that reaches back to older voices in this.

01:08:34.160 So shed, like you said, shed this like rationalist, materialist understanding of peoples and grounded to something that's far more traditional and vibrant and I think organic to what actually constitutes a people in a way of life.

01:08:49.860 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

01:08:52.100 But thank you, everybody, for coming on, of course, or rather watching.

01:08:56.180 Thank you to CJ for coming on.

01:08:57.580 And of course, make sure you check out all of his work.

01:09:00.480 If it's your first time on this channel, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe, turn on the bell, the notifications so you can catch these streams when they go live.

01:09:08.520 Love the questions as you guys provide.

01:09:10.020 But of course, you've got to catch these streams if you want to put in the questions.

01:09:13.540 If you'd like to go ahead and get these broadcasts as podcasts, you need to subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.

01:09:20.560 When you do rating and review, it helps with the algorithm.

01:09:23.480 And of course, my new book, The Total State, is out.

01:09:26.580 Lots of people picking it up.

01:09:27.700 It's awesome.

01:09:28.380 It's been getting a great response.

01:09:29.960 I'm doing a lot of media hits for it.

01:09:31.600 So, of course, you can catch me on many of your favorite shows.

01:09:33.960 I just did Dinesh D'Souza and Eric Metaxas today.

01:09:37.140 And if you want to pick it up, you can grab it on Amazon.

01:09:39.500 And when you do, of course, ratings there also help.

01:09:42.580 Thank you, everybody, once again for watching.

01:09:44.420 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - May 13, 2024

Revolution from the Middle ｜ Guest： C.Jay Engel ｜ 5⧸13⧸24

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