Joseph DeMaestro is one of the most influential political theorists of all time, and we re diving into his work on sovereignty. In this episode, we re looking at Chapter 10 of the first book in his series on sovereignty, "The National Soul."
00:07:20.900Here are all these critical documents that weave us together, that set our principles, that define us.
00:07:27.360Even many people who claim that America is a creedal nation, what they're saying is America is a religion.
00:07:33.980When people say America is a creedal nation, what they're really saying is America at its core is a religion you can adopt.
00:07:41.360And just like if you could become a Christian by adopting Christian principles or you become a Muslim by adopting Islamic dogmas, these different parts of the faith will be critical.
00:07:53.600And whether we like that relationship, whether we feel comfortable as post-enlightened humans with that relationship with government, it is going to exist either way.
00:08:03.760I mean, this is why you will hear people from sort of centrist types where they'll just be like, well, America can be anything, you know, like it's it's guns, beer and freedom.
00:08:11.960And I mean, if that's your creed, that's an incredibly weak creed that can be changed as long as, you know, the appropriate kind of goods or treats and goodies are dealt out to the people.
00:08:20.520But I mean, also in there, you see Joseph de Maistre's rather strong Catholic anti-reformation character come out here because you can he he's applied this principle before when it comes to say sola scriptura.
00:08:32.160Like if every man is the interpreter of doctrine and dogma, the same issues that we saw between the Reformation and the split between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholics, the same thing is going to happen with the emergence of democracy.
00:08:42.860If everyone can determine what the creed is, you unleash national anarchy, you unleash the very terror that happened in France.
00:08:49.880And so you're seeing a very high church, hard line.
00:08:55.680These are the things that make it people.
00:08:57.100And the moment we start debating what is actually those things, we set ourselves up for an identity crisis that leads to violence and leads to the dissolution of the people.
00:09:08.720That's that's certainly what he is looking at here.
00:09:11.340This is this is, again, why I think it's so important to look at works like this, because they come from an older time, an older place, a space where people are thinking in a very different way, but a way that was very common for hundreds of thousands of years.
00:09:26.260And so today people often have not interacted with just kind of a blunt explanation of this kind of thought.
00:09:33.340And even if you're somebody who disagrees with some of these things, it's still really critical to put yourself outside of, again, books that were just written in the last century or so.
00:09:41.380You really need to put yourself in touch with people who are coming from an entirely different frame, one that is a far longer lineage than perhaps the one that you're currently interacting with.
00:09:53.020So his next chapter is going to be on public education.
00:09:56.880But before we dive into publication, public education, let's hear from our sponsors at ISI.
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00:11:27.780All right, now, Chapter 11 is a little strange.
00:11:31.580It feels kind of oddly inserted in here at first, because all of a sudden, and it's not even in this reader, because I guess the editor felt like it was irrelevant.
00:11:39.800But I think there is one critical thing about Chapter 11, which is that, yeah, he spends a lot of time breaking down the cost of basically public education.
00:11:49.360He says, look, you know, this new French Republic, they want to have this public education for everybody.
00:11:55.080And he starts listing all the costs that are going to be involved, the buildings and the teachers and just everything that's going to be involved in this.
00:12:03.900And he comes to the conclusion, basically, that it's going to be enormously expensive.
00:12:07.480And, of course, we know that's true, right, that public education is incredibly expensive.
00:12:13.700In fact, not only is it incredibly expensive, it just becomes a boondoggle, becomes a place for regime apparatchiks to get jobs as it becomes a patronage network.
00:12:24.500And that's the second thing that he predicts, that the public education will not do a good job, that even though it will be enormously expensive, enormously time consuming, it will be this massive bureaucracy that it's going to fail.
00:12:36.600The only thing that he and this is the rail or the rare demastra L here, like the one thing that he he fails at is he predicts that it will do such a bad job that it'll just collapse because everyone will just take their kids out of it.
00:12:49.400And they'll just take care. He's like, who would leave their children in this failed system?
00:12:53.600What kind of insane person would continue to return children to this this kind of doomed project?
00:13:00.380Obviously, people are going to watch this. They're going to see how expensive it is.
00:13:03.280They're going to see it as a failure. They're going to pull their kids out.
00:13:05.680They're going to take care of themselves. And then all of a sudden, you know, it'll it'll just fall apart under the thing.
00:13:10.840Of course, we know that's exactly not what happened once people had the duty of kind of caring for their children, educating them removed from them.
00:13:18.180And they just went along with it. They didn't actually take action for the most part to to remove their children from that experience.
00:13:26.040Yeah. And I mean, this sounds very like it's out of the blue when you're reading this.
00:13:29.480But I think the last paragraph in Chapter 10 actually gives you a really great transition in here.
00:13:34.000Can you the insignificant man? You know, he's very much a great man theorist.
00:13:37.920He's very much a believer that there are people that are meant to serve and that are not meant to be in any places of power.
00:13:43.060And those people can't ensure future generations will have that dogma.
00:13:47.080Anyone that has looked at public schooling in America will know that if you have a white child, that they're going to be raised to think that their entire ancestry in the founding of this country was anathema to progress.
00:13:57.160It was evil. It was anti white racist. And so, yeah, you can't preserve the national solar character through public education.
00:14:03.360And in the book, which I have the Empyrean Press copy in front of me, you know, he gives us this great breakdown of how many millions of francs it's going to cost.
00:14:11.180And the only way that they can do that, he points out, is, is that it's going to be selling off the churches.
00:14:17.220It's going to be making sure that we take any money from tithing out of the churches, the presbyteries, the priests can't have anything.
00:14:24.380You know, these schoolhouses, you know, it's mainly going to be young men and women, 15 or 16 years of age that are teaching it.
00:14:31.040So even less qualified people than what we have today and even younger people than would be educating them.
00:14:36.360And then additionally, like professors and such are not are going to be making more money than the average person outside in the in the rural areas.
00:14:44.520But in the cities, even then, they can't afford it.
00:14:46.460So you're witnessing sort of a very similar breakdown to what we've seen in the United States and other parts with mass public education.
00:14:53.680Religion becomes secularized. It becomes defunded by the people.
00:14:57.520They don't have enough to give to the state. The state robs the churches.
00:15:00.420And additionally, you begin to witness that the uneducated people are now sort of slaves to this system, as Oren was just talking about here, that, oh, now we're going to see people be dependent on this public education system, not just the kids, but the teachers.
00:15:16.760And they're going to have the ability to influence generation after generation.
00:15:20.040And unfortunately, the maestro was a little too optimistic and hoping that this would all collapse under itself, because even if it does collapse under itself, you know, the federal government, the Department of Education and the state government so quick to bail you out.
00:15:33.940Yeah, this this it was very it was very optimistic of him to assume that parents would just never stand for this, that they could not imagine a moment where parents would simply abandon that particular duty to their children.
00:15:49.100And then this is something where I think Bertrand de Juvenal, of course, does great work talking about why, you know, totalitarian states states must collapse every every kind of duty to each other, break down every bond, remove every barrier.
00:16:06.360You know, they have to remove these these different spheres of influence.
00:16:09.080I think De Maestro was a little too optimistic, but optimistic about the continued resilience of those barriers, those bonds, those those spheres of influence to ward off some of the worst aspects of the state.
00:16:21.920But but but but that said, it is still, like I said, even for even for all the kind of mind numbing figures he runs down for a while in that chapter, it does make some really important points about kind of the nature of public education, which is critical to kind of this this post enlightenment project that he is largely criticizing.
00:16:42.480So our next chapter is chapter 12, and this one is him revisiting in many ways, the philosophy will destroy your nation kind of deal that he did in previous chapters.
00:16:56.840He talks this time not just about Rousseau, but he talks about Voltaire.
00:17:00.940He says Voltaire destroyed religion and Rousseau destroyed government.
00:17:05.780And the two worked to undermine each other simultaneously.
00:17:12.480It's again, very much the opposite in many ways of kind of how we are taught to think about this through kind of the the American separation of church and state post enlightenment lens.
00:17:23.780He very much sees these things as critical.
00:17:30.800And the corruption of one is inevitably the corruption of the other.
00:17:34.940And so he says that these two enlightenment forces both looked to pull apart what we knew.
00:17:41.580They destroyed the kind of healthy dogmas and prejudices of both faith and government, you know, kind of splaying both open to human reason and inevitably deconstructing both.
00:17:54.680So he again, this is why I think it's so important to read people like the maestro, because he's writing right after the enlightenment occurs right as it's occurring and these things are spooling up.
00:18:04.360We're sitting at the end of this thing, watching the kind of the bones get picked clean of both kind of right religion and right government, wondering how all the stuff got deconstructed.
00:18:15.460I mean, he was calling this shot, you know, back in the 1790s.
00:18:20.040And one of the important things out of this chapter, I mean, we've joked that he's coming after, you know, for Internet parlance, he's coming after the theory cells out there in the world.
00:18:28.320But he points out that the sort of tag team of Voltaire and Rousseau, at least in the eyes of de Maestro and respects to the French people, is that once you have, you know, entertained the inattentive eyes, sort of the popular masses of the world, and you give them this philosophy, but you also try and approach it from reason.
00:18:46.460And you're beginning to take away those national characters and those dogmas that the French people were raised with.
00:18:52.800I mean, he writes here that, let's say here, if one asks these men what they have done, they will speak to you of their influence on opinion.
00:19:00.440They will tell you that they have destroyed prejudices and especially fanaticism, for that that is their great world.
00:19:06.020They will celebrate in magnificent terms the kind of magistracy that Voltaire exercised over his century during a long career, but those words, prejudice and fanaticism.
00:19:15.760And the final analysis signify the belief of several nations.
00:19:19.360Voltaire has chased this belief out of a host of heads.
00:19:21.740That is to say, he has destroyed it, and this is precisely what I am saying.
00:19:25.600And so when we take out what makes French people French, like what is the French character?
00:19:30.420If we've taken out their ability to be fanatic about their population, about their country, about their monarchy, about their god, you have a large collection of people that are easily able to be ruled over a new political formula.
00:19:42.740One where it doesn't really matter what it means to be French or what it means to be English.
00:19:48.460It just means that I can have a lesser creed, a lesser fanaticism, and I can get more excited about guns, beer, and freedom than I am any sort of traditional idea of a nation or a people.
00:19:59.460And he really makes a clear point that once you get rid of long established institutions that instill tradition, whether that be the Catholic Church, whether that be the monarchy, whether that be French customs that are traditionally located in, say, your part of the country, whether that be outside Paris or in Brittany or Normandy or wherever.
00:20:18.620However, once that's gone, it's very hard to get back, and it becomes basically destroyed inside the soul of the people, and that they will be entertained by a philosophy that's very easy to poke holes into, and that there's nothing after that.
00:20:33.780Well, once the philosophy's gone, what do you have?
00:20:54.480I mean, just think about, you know, the United States withdrawing from Afghanistan, right?
00:20:58.780Like, if we're at, perhaps, the point at which there is the most disparity ever in human history between a first world, you know, nation, hegemonic army of the United States, and a bunch of guys who, like, herd goats somewhere in Afghanistan.
00:21:19.340And if the goat herders can make the American army lead, what's the difference?
00:21:36.100The guy who wants it more wins it, right?
00:21:39.420You have a lot of people right now, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but since it's relevant, we'll touch it real quick.
00:21:44.940A lot of people right now are blown away by the fact that many Palestinians are willing to trade everything, including their children, for the elimination of their enemies and say, oh, this is barbaric.
00:22:01.360It also means fanaticism has an incredible power all its own.
00:22:06.500It can destroy all kinds of modern things that we don't believe should be assailable by, you know, by kind of these old antiquated beliefs.
00:22:17.900But the strong gods come back, and you got to understand that these things are real, and they have a really serious impact on your society.
00:22:26.600Yeah, I mean, the same thing can be applied to any issue that you're kind of seeing in America.
00:22:33.000I mean, is there a will to overcome sort of anti-natalist rhetoric?
00:22:36.700Is there a will to overcome the vibrant, you know, anti-white racism or the anti-Christian attitudes in your country?
00:22:43.300Those guys are, like Oren said, they're willing to die for it.
00:22:47.000And the question, I think, has become for a lot of people, well, what are you willing to sacrifice other than maybe getting in an account banned?
00:22:53.000And then when we see people who do sacrifice things, like those who get debanged or those who get canceled, we act as if, oh, they're dead.
00:23:16.340And de Maistre is in the, you know, ground zero, watching his country be torn apart by liberal fanaticism, a philosophy that is so weak that has only destroyed most of the Western world at a lot of its foundations.
00:23:28.240And instead, you know, he points out that the same thing Edmund Burke pointed out with the French Revolution.
00:23:33.300Who are you to change the rights of those who have yet to be born?
00:23:36.460And he has enough judgment and prejudice to say, no, this is not good for the country.
00:23:40.840And the same thing, I think, can apply to what's going on overseas.
00:23:43.220And the same thing that we should also take a look at here in America with our own cultural battles is, you know, words are one thing.
00:24:26.960Or as our, you know, previous episode we did, Nick Land put it succinctly.
00:24:32.100Every disagreement is an opportunity to rule, right?
00:24:35.300This is kind of the original understanding of this, is that the constant division, the constant need to reassess, question, you know, break down, it destroys all of these binding agents.
00:24:49.860All of these things that make people who they are at their core, these axioms that define a society and a people, they all get eaten alive.
00:24:58.780It dissolves every one of these things.
00:25:00.760At the end, you're left hollowed out because you've questioned every single thing.
00:25:06.040The idea that you should question everything was always a terrible maxim.
00:25:10.320And it's the one that can bring a ruin to a nation.
00:25:13.940Yeah, and I think he kind of brings it up here really just perfect.
00:25:17.060He says, a pen friendly to religion when it addresses reproaches to philosophy is suspicious to a great number of readers who persist in seeing fanaticism wherever they do not see incredulity or indifference.
00:25:29.920And so, I mean, it's a really important thing here when we see people that will rail on.
00:25:34.640And I mean, we've seen this from Buckley to the National Review guys that will say, oh, we stand to thwart, you know, the cliff of history yelling stop.
00:25:42.000Well, you know, what is that to many people other than indifference?
00:25:45.220You're trying to reproach philosophy from a way that these philosophers can't understand anymore.
00:25:50.700They can't understand the importance of having your religion, your dogmas, your prejudices.
00:26:52.000And eventually it will simply fall away.
00:26:53.560I mean, we see that today ever so clearly.
00:26:56.560I mean, what is the national religion of the state of the United States?
00:27:00.120It is progressivism and it is leftism.
00:27:02.160Any old religion or any old patriotism of, you know, whether it be you going to a Baptist church and, you know, loving your country and raising the flag at half-staff every Veterans Day on November 11th.
00:27:12.460To them, you're, you're a heretic and it will wither away and they will destroy you for it because that old belief, that old religion has been replaced by a suicidal ideation that is, you know, progressive political philosophy.
00:27:28.020I'm trying to find it here because it's not my reader.
00:27:30.360There's a great line about, or no, you had the quote.
00:27:34.460I think you had it marked down where he talks about how the loss of these things.
00:27:38.900Yes, it was a bloodier age, but it was also an age of oracles.
00:27:42.020It was an age of, you know, things being revivified.
00:27:45.800It's not up here, so I can't read it real quick.
00:27:56.480But as soon as the idea of divinity is the principle of human action, this action is fruitful, creative, and invincible.
00:28:01.980An unknown force makes itself felt on all sides, animating, warming, vivifying all.
00:28:06.740With whatever errors, whatever crimes, ignorance, and human corruption have defiled this august idea, it nonetheless retains its incredible influence.
00:28:15.240Amid massacres, men multiply, the nations display dizzying vigor.
00:28:19.620In former times, Rousseau said, Greece flourished amid the cruelest wars.
00:28:23.460Blood flowed there, and the whole country was covered with men.
00:28:26.060Without a doubt, but it was a time of century of wonders and oracles, a century of faith, after the manner of men of this time, that is to say, the century of exalted patriotism.
00:28:35.520When one has said to the great being that he exists, one has not yet said anything.
00:29:10.880We still remember the Spartans of Thermopylae.
00:29:12.820We still remember who was there at the Battle of Marathon.
00:29:15.140And we still remember even the wars inside of Italy and the succession of the fights between Italian states.
00:29:21.680The times were bloody, but great works had been made.
00:29:24.380And once you abandon all that and you abandon the drive to create something because you believe in it to a point that you're willing to fight for it,
00:29:32.140you become an indifferent philosopher and you become someone without fanaticism, without belief.
00:29:37.560And to quote the line from the movie Troyes, like, that is why no one will remember your name.
00:29:41.900And that's a really damning indictment from De Maestra.
00:29:46.580And it's especially echoing to, I think, people of the modern day.
00:29:50.940Because, again, I think what people, when things like what happens in the Middle East or whenever conflict breaks out anywhere at this point,
00:29:59.160the first reaction of pretty much every modern nation, every wealthy kind of comfortable nation is,
00:30:06.620how could anyone actually fight for something they believe in?
00:30:09.780You know, that's something that is really difficult.
00:30:12.080You know, I used to teach and I would talk to students.
00:30:16.220And the current generation cannot grasp someone fighting for somebody else besides themselves.
00:30:23.300Like, they can understand why you would need to maybe fight to defend yourself or maybe your family.
00:30:28.140But the idea that you would defend a nation, defend, you know, the honor of something, you know, that's, you know, fight for the glory of something.
00:30:35.860That's just completely foreign because, you know, we've become so soft in these ways.
00:30:41.800And, you know, myself included, you know, not throwing shade on anyone else without myself.
00:30:47.620It's something, it's an idea that it's very difficult for a lot of people to grasp.
00:30:51.580But it has been the driver of greatness throughout history.
00:30:54.800It has been a critical aspect of what animates great civilizations.
00:30:59.340And the lack of it really can show you the road to civilizational death,
00:31:04.600which is what he's warning about when he's constantly harping on philosophy,
00:31:07.960is that this is the road to civilizational death.
00:31:10.060It will drive out and it will kill all these things that allow a civilization to fight for its own survival.
00:31:15.820Yeah, I mean, it cannot be stressed enough that once you've lost that animating drive,
00:31:22.380something that is pre-eternal or divine, you know, what is it more than maybe a rearguard action