Marianne Williamson: Getting Only Half the Point

At American Greatness Matthew Boose takes a look at the unexpectedly popular Marianne Williamson who, he proposes is bringing something to politics other than mere wonkery.

Like Trump, Williamson is an outsider who understands that politics is about bigger things than what can be reduced to policy bromides. 

Well yes. But Mariane Williamson is a preacher -- if a new-age preacher -- and I thought that we were supposed to have a separation between church and state.

Williamson is outraging the liberals, apparently, because she is saying that you can't cure depression with drugs, and that is "anti-science." Well maybe she has a point. Maybe we have a problem, Houston.

To admit that America is broken spiritually invites reflection on the cultural revolution of the past half-century. Has America really progressed, or have things gotten worse?

Why are there so many mass shootings these days? Why are young Americans killing themselves at record high rates? Why are they having children at record low rates? Why are diagnoses of depression and anxiety so high, despite a marked jump in antidepressant use? Why is life expectancy in the wealthiest nation on earth going down, rather than up? 

Yes but. Politics is downstream of culture is downstream of religion. The job of politicians is to divide the voters at election time -- on my maxim that politics is division -- and the job of policy wonks is to figure out how to divvy up the loot one more time -- on my maxim that government is an armed minority that taxes the people to reward its supporters.

The whole question of what is the good life, what is the right way of life, what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything comes upstream of politics. It is the subject matter of religion.

And, according to the Bill of Rights, the United States shall have no establishment of religion.

However, even a semi-moron can see that religion is always bumping into politics and politics is always bumping into religion. That is because when the nation's legislators make laws they are necessarily informed by their various religions. They have a vision of the Good Life and Justice and they are bound and determined to get there.

In our age, with the decline in authority of Axial Age religions, new religions are popping up all over. They may be Socialism, the idea of building a Heaven on Earth with government power. They may be Nietzsche's Übermensch off in the mountains doing his Zarathustra thing. They may be Jungians getting in touch with their personal or collective unconscious. Or they may be new-age gurus like Marianne Williamson.

And wouldn't you know. All these religions seem to take a remarkable interest in politics.

But our Founding Fathers knew that this was a problem. The problem was identified for our age by our liberal friends who found it intolerable when fundamentalist Christians were "legislating morality." Or when McCarthyites were flushing Communists out of the State Department and the public schools.

But now the shoe is on the other foot and liberals and lefties all over are legislating their morality and getting conservatives bounced from their jobs at Google and Mozilla. Notice that the liberals that are beside themselves with McCarthyism have no problem with the defenestration of folks that don't worship in their church.

To talk about our political problem in terms of Trump and Williamson going a bit deeper than the usual idiot wonks is to miss the problem.

The problem is that, with government so busy with 1,001 programs -- all of which come down to some sort of idea of Good and Evil which all originate in some sort of religion or quasi-religion -- there will inevitably be a lot of religious conflict arising out of some peoples' religion getting to set the government agenda and other peoples' religion getting marginalized as "bigoted" or "superstitious".

If government were smaller then people could exercise their religions and project their values in the public square without having to fight to get government on their side.

For in the real world people only "get" the notions that are taken for granted in their cultural bubble. Their beliefs and their understanding of the meaning of life, the universe and everything go without saying. But other peoples' faith and beliefs are experienced as a threat.

You can see the problem. If people get the power of government on their side then they will use it to neutralize the "threat" from other peoples' beliefs.

And since, on my reductive Three Peoples theory, there are at least three kinds of people on this Earth that means that there are three world views competing for that government dollar and the opportunity to legislate their morality.

The less government there is the more that each of the Three Peoples can live according to their values and not keep bumping into people that think they are a threat.

Four Laws: Socialism Can't Compute Prices

There are, I think, Four Laws, scientific principles, if you like, that need to be understood in relation to all proposals for More Government.

The First Law was first enunciated in 1920 by the Austrian Jew Ludwig von Mises, the man that founded the Austrian School of economics in an article titled "Die Wirtschaftrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen" and translated into English by S. Adler as "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth."

Mises expanded on his argument at book length in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, first published in German in 1922. The short form of his argument is that socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices.

In his 1978 Foreword to my copy of Socialism Nobel economist F.A. Hayek writes:

When Socialism appeared in 1922, its impact was profound. It gradually but fundamentally altered the outlook of many of the young idealists returning to their university studies after World War I. I know, for I was one of them... 

Socialism promised to fulfill our hopes for a more rational, more just world. And then came this book. Our hopes were dashed. Socialism told us that we had been looking for improvement in the wrong direction.

What exactly did Mises argue?

Let us assume, he writes, that the socialist state resolves the problem of consumption by handing out coupons for the various consumption goods to which the comrades are entitled. Immediately a market will arise. For instance, "beer tipplers" will want to exchange their non-alcoholic drink coupons with the alcoholic drink coupons of "teetotallers." And then an exchange problem arises.

If, for instance 1 cigar becomes equal to 5 cigarettes, it will be impossible for the administration to fix the arbitrary value of 1 cigar = 3 cigarettes as a basis for the equal distribution of cigars and cigarettes respectively. 

And, in fact, the socialist commonwealth will find itself using the informal prices in the consumer "market" as a guide to socialist production.

The problem is that there are no upstream prices, no way of rationalizing the production processes to deliver, in the end, consumer products in accordance with the demands of the comrades. It is one thing for Robinson Crusoe to make a complete inventory of costs and benefits in his solitary life as he evaluates economic options in his solitary attempt to survive. "In the case of more complicated and more lengthy processes of production it will, plainly, not answer."

In an exchange economy we get prices as the unit of economic calculation.

In the first place, it renders it possible to base the calculation upon the valuations of all participants in trade.

So prices reflect the net effect, today, of all the participants in the market. It also enables participants to determine whether they can participate profitably in the market, making their product or providing their service. Finally, prices provide a way of referring all exchange values back to a single unit: i.e., money.

Of course, money and prices do notd tell us directly about "extra-economic" values. Except, that obviously, they do. Because the "beer-tippler" unconsciously values his beer over other potential choices, such as food for his children. And his choices ripple through the economy.

It is tempting to think of a socialist commonwealth as rather like a big business, that has various divisions and relationships. But the economic calculations of big business are always related to market prices outside the boundaries of the corporation.

For each separate calculation of the particular branches of one and the same enterprise depends exclusively on the fact that is precisely in market dealings that market prices to be taken as the bases of calculation are formed for all kinds of goods and labor employed. Where there is no free market, there is no pricing mechanism; without a pricing mechanism, there is no economic calculation.

This is the vital point. In the market economy, people are buying and selling millions of items every day, setting prices that reflect their value preferences on that day, and those prices ripple up through the production system. And those prices reflect not just what people think and want today but what they think of the future. This is most notable in commodity and stock prices.

Of course there are substitute pricing mechanism in the socialist economy. First of all, there are the prices of commodities and labor outside the socialist commonwealth that the socialist planners can use in their plans.

Then there is Shortages. If a production unit runs out of a certain material then it shows that the socialist Plan has mistaken the demand for that factor of production. But then what? Does the production unit shut down until more product is delivered? Does it do a deal with another nearby production unit? Your pipe for my angle iron? Or do we wait for next year when the planners will have adjusted their plan to account for last year's error. In fact, though, socialist production enterprises tend to want to produce everything in-house, including manhole covers, because of the risk of running out and the uncertainty of getting stuff from other production units.

We moderns all complain about prices. But nobody does anything about it, and just as well.

Because the price system is another proof of God's existence. Who would have thought that individual buying decisions by individual consumers would transmit messages right through the economic "system" giving all participants daily nudges towards adjusting their activities towards satisfying the most urgent needs of the consumer? It's a miracle.

Politics is not about A Rational Disccusion of the Issues

This  morning I am reading a ton of tut-tutters tutting about the Democratic debates. They are upset that all the candidates were tilting against dragons and monsters instead of proposing sensible and rational solutions to our national problems.

One expert even noted how candidate Trump in 2016, despite horrendous mistakes and ignorance about policy, still dominated the debate stage with his insults and personal attacks on the other candidates.

Because politics is not about issues. It is about confronting the enemy.

No kidding! Trump dominated the stage by setting up monsters like illegal immigration and corporations outsourcing jobs, and promising to fight for America.

Rule One: Politics always involves an enemy. Doesn't matter who or what it is. It can be the Jews. It can be Big Pharma. It can be Big Oil. It can be the Commies. It can be radical Islam. It can be racism. It can be homophobia. The whole point is that there must be something, some enemy, some existential peril, for which only force is the answer, and we must band together to slay the monster!

But here is the problem. Suppose you are a peaceable sort of chap that doesn't see an enemy behind that rock? Well, then, you ain't gonna win the election.

The special innovation of the left is to have changed the identity of the enemy. In the old days of dynastic rulers the enemy was either some pretender to the throne or the prince next door. Then in the age of the absolute monarchs we had nation against nation with the subtext of religion. You see that in the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 and also the Dutch invasion of Britain in 1688 to turn it into a Protestant bulwark against Catholic France.

But the French Revolution changed all that. It inaugurated a politics based on a secular religion, where the enemy was not the neighboring king or an ambitious aristocrat but the class of aristocrats and the class or priests.

Then Marx had the idea of the middle class and the new industrial lords of business as the enemy of the working class and humanity.

Then the Frankfurt School had the idea of not just the workers as helpless victims of the middle class but women and minorities too. They had suffered at the hands of the racist sexist middle class patriarchy since the dawn of time.

And so we get to today's politics which is all about finding some monster that is devastating the lives of some utterly helpless and innocent victims.

The most recent innovation is the idea of the end of the world caused by man's despoiling of the environment. Actually, this is not a new idea but an ancient idea. The Fall. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Actually, we are talking about the creation of human agency. Back before the Fall, you see, mankind did not have agency, was just an animal. But when you get agency you get responsibility. If things go wrong it is not just the gods dumping on humans, but humans making a wrong or evil decision, violating God's Law or, in more recent times, social justice.

(Isn't it interesting that the left is advancing the idea of human agency and responsibility in one area, climate change, while the entire rest of its politics is about non-agency, the helpless victimhood of minorities, women, and LGBT?)

So, in the left's worldview there are the responsibles: corporations, white supremacists, patriarchs, Christians, Republicans. They are to be held to the highest standards.

Then there are the victims: minorities, women, LGBT, illegal aliens, Democrats, Muslims. No standards apply, because, being helpless victims they do not have agency and cannot be held responsible for their behavior.

When you think about it, this is a beautiful system. It provides an eternal conflict for lefties to fight, and they are always on the side of the angels.

But my line is that the rise of the market economy and the transformation of wealth from land to "intangible capital" means that we need a lot less politics. Because there just aren't that many things that need to be resolved by force.

You can see the problem as faced by Republicans in the post-Reagan era. The gentlemanly Republicans kept getting snookered by the Dems because the Bushes and the Romneys believed in a kinder, gentler politics, a compassionat conservatism at the same time that Democrats were winding themselves up into a fury over racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Enter Trump with the streetfighter instinct to conjure up some enemies to slay. And now all the experts are tut-tutting about an unprecedented era of partisan division, and they are shocked, shocked, at Trump's crudities.

It's a problem. If we agree that politics and strong government is no longer a requirement in the industrial era how do you get the lefties to abandon their politics of outrage and demonisation?

To put it another way, how do we do the political equivalent of turning warriors into sports heroes? Notice how organized sports arose in the 19th century, just exactly at the time, I would argue, that wars became stupid.

Because here's the point. When we talk about a rational discussion of the issues what we are really saying is that here is something that can be resolved by the ordinary processes of the market economy and the give and take of day-to-day life. In other words, it need not involve politics.

I think that the secular movement we call conservatism is basically organized around the de-lethalizing of politics. That's what all the folderol of constitutions and separation of powers and due process is about. It is trying to lower the temperature so that nobody feels that they have to turn to armed force in order to get their injustice addressed.

But the left has operated under the faith that all the bourgeois constitutions and ownership and due process are a sham that is pretending that white supremacy and patriarchy and exploitation and oppression doen't exist.

Well, maybe they are a problem, but how bad can it be when per-capita income has increased by 30 times in the last 200 years?

But how do you resolve the argument, between the ordinary middle class that is not that interested in power and a secular-evangelical left that is organized for #Resistance and believes in the saving grace of political power?

Tell that to the activists.

"You Idiot:" Of Course We Were, Are

American Greatness's Julie Kelly admits it: "You idiot!" She admits that she was gullible and stupid and trusted people that she shouldn't have trusted. Then she lists all the things about which she and Beltway Republicans have been wrong since whenever. Including:

• Free trade; outsourcing.
• Nation-building in the Middle East.
• Immigration.
• Contempt for our fellow countrymen.
• And so on.

OK, free trade isn't a panacea, but the less restraints on trade the better, because restraints are usually all about helping powerful special interests. And free trade was a way of spreading the wealth around in the Cold War.

Nation-building wasn't so hot, but in the far-off days before fracking when Middle East oil was the name of the game, well, we had an interest in making sure that the oil got here. We needed to be able to bash the Wahabis and the Saddams and the Iranian mullahs around just to show we cared.

Immigration got me here, an immense benefit to America! And if feminists teach educated American women not to have babies, something's got to give. But every immigrant is another entry in the labor market and the law of supply and demand applies. And if employers are tempted to hire illegals under the table and avoid paying payroll taxes, and our Democratic friends exempt illegal aliens from the burden of following the law...

Contempt? Well, that's the name of the game with politics. Our guys are great guys and the others are contemptible. And what do you say about the white working class that kept voting for Democrats long after the Democrats made it perfectly clear that they didn't care a whit for the white working class?

The job of government is to protect us from existential perils. But should it protect each and every job from the next technical revolution? That is what a lot of us want when our industry goes into decline. Should government protect us from discrimination? Probably, but that does not mean that government should be doing quotas and timetables. Should government protect widows and orphans? Probably.

But here's an idea. Suppose we say that government's job is just to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic. And that it is the measure of each of us how much we help people that have lost their job, that are marginalized because of their race or gender or class, that are too poor to help themselves through no fault of their own. That way, government stays in its lane, which is force, and the rest of us are under constant self-examination, worrying about whether we helped enough.

Couldn't we say that the welfare state is a moral cop-out that lets us all sit in front of our 4K digital wall TVs and say, well, I gave at the office in my paycheck, so don't bother me?

My line is that the industrial revolution has completely overturned the basis of human society in the agricultural age, which was to protect our food-growing lands from pirates and predators. The consequence is that we need much less force and political power.

But the politicians and the voters are acting as if nothing has changed. The Dems are running around conjuring up huge new applications of government power, from universal health care to the Green New Deal. Of course they are, because the business of political leadership is to lead a band of warriors to either conquer new lands and promise glorious loot and plunder, or to defend our land against other conquerors -- say, eevil fossil fuel producers -- and protect us all from their depredations.

It is very difficult for any politician to say: hey, not really much to do around here. I´ll just sit on the front porch to be ready in case anything blows up.

So all politicians run around like idiots, and their staffers and sycophants run around in circles to make it look as if they are doing something useful.

And the rest of us sit around and complain that "they" haven't fixed the pothole on our street. 

The Question of Women in the Public Square

I think that the question of women in the public square is the big question of our time. I was alerted to this a while back when I wrote about German sociologist Georg Simmel.

Simmel recognized that 19th century technologies "made for less labor in the household." This caused unease among middle-class women, who now sought activity outside the home.

Obviously, Simmel wrote, the public sphere, the world outside the home, in the short term would still be defined by men for men, but in the long term women would transform the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility." 

So ever since, I have wondered about what that means.

See, I believe that the point of the male-created public square is to create a public space where the old male culture of revenge justice (an eye for an eye, a life for a life) is replaced by the culture of law and politics. In this culture revenge is reduced to the "wait until next time" of failure in politics and sports. Men still fight, but not in blood sports. Today, men have a Culture of Insult where men exchange insults in a playful way, rather than in a lethal way.

Now, the previous culture of women was different. They got on in the old village culture with gossip, which is two women talking together about a third woman. And they penalized defaulters -- the woman that all the women agreed was a problem -- by naming and shaming, and in extreme cases, by ostracism.

In today's culture we see this woman's culture at work in notions like microaggressions and safe spaces. These are all about women disliking direct confrontation and calling it a microaggression and wanting to control people indirectly. A safe space is the complete negation of the public square, where you have to stand up and "act like a man." What happens to the public square if you are not allowed to confront other ideas with your ideas and if you run for a safe space if you hear something that makes you feel bad? I don't know.

But I have an example of how it might work, from Spirit and Flesh, a book about a fundamentalist church by liberal sociologist James M. Ault, Jr. In the fundamentalist church the men held all the formal offices, but the women ran the church through their husbands. Notice that this means the women never get into conflict or suffer a microaggression or leave their safe spaces, or venture into the public square. But they still run the place.

An example of women in the public square is the reported problem that educated women have with President Trump. They don't like his insults. Well, I can understand that, because the outer-borough New Yawker Trump lives and acts as a man of his culture, and guys like him interact in a Culture of Insult. Girls don't like direct insults; they understand and practice the insult indirect, as in "I can't believe she said that."

But there is this. I haven't heard a word out of these suburban snowflakes about the insults-direct that Democrats hand out with every new day. I don't hear them complain about the racist Al Sharpton's rhetoric. I don't recall them being outraged when the Democratic line was that Mitt Romney was a cruel capitalist or a cruel teenager or a monster that put the dog on the roof of his car.

No, I don't recall any of my nice liberal neighbors saying of the Dems of the time: "I can't believe they said that about Mitt Romney."

So, I suspect, when a woman complains about the insults delivered by President Trump, they are really signalling to their friends that they are good loyal Democrats. I'll believe their complaints when they start calling out Democrats for their race-card outrages.

And really, what is the Big Problem of the age? It is not President Trump insulting the Four Squaddies. It is the Democrats preventing a frank and honest discussion of The Issues by calling their opponents racist sexist homophobes on every issue under the sun.

Now here is an interesting question, on the day after the latest Democratic debate: Marianne Williamson, the new-age guru and author of books like A Return to Love. Lefty journalist Matt Taibbi is wondering if Williamson is going to be the Trump of the 2020 Democratic race, by completely changing the subject on the usual suspects.

But I wonder. The point about Trump is that he energized a whole sector of Americans, the white working class demographic that had been neglected by both parties for years. Marianne Williamson appeals to educated women suburbanites, who are not a helpless neglected political demographic. I'd say that the chances are good that any Marianne Williamson reader is already a Dem voter and would never vote for a Republican. Because Republicans believe in "hate" rather than love.

Irregardless, the whole question of women in the public square is only going to become more and more important. Unless women decide that they don't really want to live in the bracing air of the public square and would rather rule the world through their husbands, as of old.

Race Card Poker

Did you notice that President Trump tweeted the other day that the Four Squaddies were "a very Racist group of troublemakers?"

How dare, how dare he do something like that?

Why everybody knows that it is impossible for Women of Color to be racist. Or sexist. Or anything else. And the very idea of accusing a Democratic Congresswoman of Color of being a racist.

I Can't Believe He Said That!

Here's what I want to know. How did the young Drumpf skip the mandatory All Whites are Racist 101 class? Did Daddy get him an opt-out card from the local KKK Kleagle?

Mind you, I do think it was naughty of the President to be tweeting about how, back in the day, Al Sharpton wanted him to attend his racist soirées or whatever he called them. Hey Big Al. What's yer problem? Trump helped you back in the day; so how come you ain't covering for him now?

When you think about it, it is monstrous that the white people of the US are being forced to cower under their beds in case someone should up and call them a racist.

Which is, need I remind you, about the worst thing you can be. So you would think that any good kindly American would think once, twice, thrice, before accusing a fellow citizen of being a racist.

But you would be wrong, because there are a lot of Americans that just love the upset-the-table power that comes with the unanswerable racist accusation.

I have lately been thinking that we should adopt the notion of President Coolidge, who said, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

Hey, Cal. I like it.

So I say that if, according to the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, government may not discriminate on the basis of race or sex, that is final.

So why are we all getting our knickers in a twist playing kiddie playground games about "you're daddy's a dirty raacist!"

Well I will tell you. Something weird happened with the Civil Rights Acts. Before the acts, government was not supposed to discriminate. But it did. People could discriminate, but often they didn't.

Then we have the Civil Rights Acts that declared that neither government nor people could discriminate on the basis of race or sex.

Racist sexist homophobe Barry GOldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because, he said, only government should be forbidden to discriminate. A free person should be allowed to discriminate.

Yet what do we have today? Government discriminates on the basis of race and sex every day, because diversity and inclusion. Big corporate institution discriminate of the basis of race and sex and sexual orientation every day. Because good little girls in HR. Social media discriminates on the basis of race and sex and viewpoint every day, because "hate."

But if one little mom-and-pop Christian baker declines to cater a gay wedding, saying like Bartleby the scrivener, "I would prefer not to," all hell breaks loose, courtesy of the lefties at the local Human Rights Commission.

We know how we all got here. We got here because majority white Americans got taught to be guilty about race. The slaves, dontcha know, although the vast majority of white Americans come from serf or peasant stock in Europe. And the liberals in charge of the culture enjoyed the power they got from victimizing ordinary nobody whites.

And Republican politicians learned that it was impossible to win a race-card street fight, because the media would always come down on the side of the poor helpless victimized woman or minority or the vile minority racist politician like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.

Well, it looks like Trump thinks he knows how to play race-card poker, and he is standing up to the usual racists and sexists on the left that the liberal media has been protecting for half a century.

Of course, he may go down in flames. But on the other hand this may be an Emperor's New Clothes moment. At this point, nobody knows.

It's a topsy-turvy world. Here we have the left that says, on the one hand, that race and gender are artificial cultural artifacts. Yet on the other hand it insists that human identity is inseparable from race and gender identity. Rep. Pressley (D-MA):

[W]e don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don't want to be a black voice. We don't need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don't want to be a queer voice. 

They say that the way to center yourself on hate speech like that is to substitute the word "white" for "black" and imagine a Republican politician saying it. 

We don’t need white faces that don't want to be a white voice. We don't need Christians that don’t want to be a Christian voice. We don’t need men that don't want to be a male voice. 

Nuff said. But then arises the question.

As the mice asked, back in the good old days of The Tailor of Gloucester, courtesy of Beatrix Potter, "Who is going to bell the cat?" Actually the notion goes back to Aesop's Fables.

The answer is simple. Someone with the courage that is willing to lose everything on the next hand of race-card poker.

Our Ruling Class's Unjust Sense of Entitlement

In a recent piece, Matthew Continetti has demonstrated the fundamental truth about our political situation in these United States:

[T]he impeachment debate is not about what Trump has done, is doing, or might do. It is about whether he and the social forces he represents are entitled to rule.

He points out that 40 percent of Americans believe that President Trump should be impeached. And that means 70 percent of Democrats. In other words, 40 percent of Americans don't think that President Trump is entitled to rule.

Now, of course, the average American and the average Democrat didn't come up with that on their own. As I keep saying, you have to be carefully taught. The impeachment notion arose out of Hillary Clinton's failure to concede on the night -- OK she was drunk -- or the day after the election in 2016. As we know, there was already a movement in the "intelligence community" to try and compromise Candidate Trump. And what with the mental health issues of Democrats relating to Trump Derangement Syndrome -- what is this notion of making reaction to election results into a mental health question? -- and the activist community always needing to get up in the morning with something to protest, pretty soon the vile Trump presumption had to be erased.

And why not? As Continetti writes:

Trump is a one-man rebuke of progressivism, of political correctness, of a humanitarianism that does not recognize citizenship or national borders.

And, of course, we are not just talking about the program of a political party but the moral agenda of a secular religious movement. Our lefty friends believe in their free health care, their entitlements, race and gender politics, their Green New Deal as morally right, indeed morally incontestable. The idea that a politician and a party should be opposed to their moral agenda is an abomination to them. Inconceivable!

And really this is nothing new. Back when I came into the US, in 1968, the election of Richard Nixon was an abomination to the New Left that had arisen in the 1960s. It was inconceivable to them that the American people in their right minds would elect a man such as Nixon to the presidency. As I comment elsewhere, my Jewish boss had a Nixon $3 bill coffee mug, as in "fake as a $3 bill." Hey, Richard Nixon was a Red Baiter, besmirching the reputations of Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas, first of all, and then hunting Commies in the McCarthy years. The impeachment of Richard Nixon was exactly the same as the Mueller special prosecutor: an ageing figurehead sitting on top of a crew of Democrat partisans determined to "get" the president.

Back in the 1970s Republicans were good guys that imagined, or felt they ought to, respond to the impeachment of Nixon in good faith. But it really wasn't good faith, and it took the Clinton impeachment for Republicans to wise up.

In the impeachment of Richard Nixon the two GOP wise men of the Senate, Goldwater and Minority Leader Rhodes, went down Pennsylvania Avenue to tell Nixon that he didn't have the votes to survive in the Senate. After the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the House of Representatives Vice President Gore went down Pennsylvania Avenue to lead a pro-Clinton rally of Democratic faithful at the White House.

If you are a Democrat I don't suppose you understand that and what it means to people like me. But I do. And so now and forever I regard impeachments as pure politics, the attempt to kick over the verdict of the voters with inside Washington baseball.

But I understand the position of the liberal left, I really do.

Their religion, their secular religion that sanctified their big-government politics is a monster, and slowly a counter movement -- among ordinary people -- is forming against it. And the liberal left can't believe it. Like any prophetic movement, their prophecy is failing and they can't believe it. They are desperately trying to believe that the glorious Rapture is coming, just as prophesied!

Or you can use the analysis of Crane Brinton in his Analysis of Revolution in which he proposes that all revolutionary movements that obtain political power get to a point where their prophecy of universal justice is not getting there. So a Reign of Terror and Virtue is needed to go the last mile. That's how to understand the demonizing of opposition to the progressives project as  "hate" and bigotry -- when it's not racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Now my notion is that the project of the left has been a folly from the first. Its fundamental error is to believe that you can bring on the millennium with political power. Actually, I think, the lesson of the last two centuries is that political power is past its sell-by date. It is not necessary to use political power to secure a safe patch of land on which to grow food and protect it from pirates and plunderers. That's because the only real thing of value in the modern world for wiving and thriving is "intangible capital," the stuff between the ears of humans. You can't steal or plunder intangible capital. You have to let it thrive and grow without political interference.

Moreover, I think, the market and its verdict on all economic decisions removes the urgency of a moral framework in day-to-day life. The market rewards people that produce the products that other people want, and that provide the kind of services that other people want. It rewards trust and honesty, and it rewards people that reward trust and honesty. What more do you want?

Well, the great theme of the modern era is the notion of "creativity." The way to understand this is to realize that, in the old days, it was God that was the creative one. He created Heaven and Earth, and our human job was to be worthy of the world he created for us, follow his Rules and respect his Judgement. But with the explosion of human knowledge and technique we are discovering that, apart from the original Creation or Big Bang, there is a lot that humans can do to "create" ideas and stuff in this world. Not to mention the miracle of the creation of children.

I think that this new Creative Age is a revolution in human life without parallel. I think it is bigger than the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture. And, I believe, you ain't seen nothing yet.

But, the problem is that our educated class has got a hold of the wrong end of the stick. They think that the Creative Age is all about them and their creative ideas for politics and justice and sexual experimentation and saving the planet from climate change.

I think that the creative class is wrong, and will have to go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and unspeakable trials before it gets the point that its ideology is a Great Reaction and its cultural and political achievements thus far amount to the Crime of the Millennium.

But hey, the Hero's Journey is a journey into the underworld of the unconscious, and only after surviving severe trials does the hero return to the ordinary world. So the educated class needs its journey into the underworld.

My indictment of the Great Reaction is that socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism, identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism is neo-knight-errantry; social justice is neo-plunder.

My indictment of the Crime of the Millennium is that the educated class has driven the working class and minorities off the Road to the Middle Class. This is why the white working class is dying of despair, and 70 percent of black babies in the United States are born to a single mother. And the educated class has led western women into a wilderness of sorrows, denying their basic female nature and teaching them to imagine they can live just like men. And then the left, needing something to save the world -- as in Christianity -- has come up with climate change as a doctrine to "save the planet." But actually it is no different than the Crusades to save the Holy Land or the fight against Fascism or the fight against Communism. It is all about the political class's need for a war or the moral equivalent of war.

Our educated ruling class has this crazy notion -- common to ruling classes down the ages -- that God (or history) has ordained it to be the beneficent Oz for our age. And so the ruling class is entitled to take out any commoner that dares to challenge its God-given -- or arc of history driven -- right to rule.

We commoners have a job to do. To gently, but firmly, prise the fingers of the educated ruling class off the levers of political and cultural power.

As for what will come after that? I have no idea.