The Republican Opposition's Gnostic Rebellion: Or, why McCarthy's opponents should stop acting like a bunch of liberals

Makis E. Warlamis

The failure of Kevin McCarthy to secure the speakership of the U.S. House certainly doesn't reflect well on McCarthy. It is his first test as a leader: can he secure the support he needs in his own party? If he can't win his fellow Republicans, how can we expect him to command leadership in a chamber in which the opposition party has almost as many seats as his own?

Still, the main problem is not the opposing party, but the opponents within his own party who, without any alternative, are preventing McCarthy's installation as House Speaker. The only alternative McCarthy's Republican opponents are offering is some ghostly political democratic ideal, some non-McCarthy Shangri-La which will allow them to legislate in peace and eternal bliss.

It's enough to make smoke-filled rooms look positively attractive in comparison--and themselves like a circular firing squad. They're going to shoot themselves in the hope that some of the gore gets spattered on McCarthy.

Why should McCarthy's opponents be expected to sully themselves with the course political realities necessary in a parliamentary body? Every time you hear a politician rail against backroom deals and behind-the-scenes coalitions and cross-party alliances, make a mental note that this person is either being completely dishonest, or simply doesn't understand how politics works. In the first case he cannot be trusted and will end up engaging in the very behavior he condemns as soon as he's out of earshot; in the second case, he is a complete innocent who will never be effective and should be sent immediately to a monastery.

The legislative process has been aptly compared to a sausage factory for a reason.

McCarthy is not perfect. No one disputes this. Both sides know it. The difference is that his Republican opponents offer, as an alternative to McCarthy, some kind of ideal the details of which seem to elude McCarthy's most ardent detractors--some sort of Trumpian Shangri-La, some unrealistic Arcadian vision of ideal politics. It is the spectacle of a bunch of self-professed conservatives championing what Thomas Sowell has derisively called the "Vision of the Anointed."

The chief characteristic of this alternative is that it is not McCarthy. Beyond that lies the unknown.

Note that McCarthy's opponents are offering no actual alternative to McCarthy other than people who actually support him. There is no alternative except some dreamy political ideal that is so perfect it cannot even be described.

Is there a Swamp in Washington? Sure there is. Can it every be completely drained? Of course not. Such political swamps have existed time immemorial. And to think they can be completely drained is to cease to be conservative because it is to cease to be in touch with reality.

The problem with this kind of conservative ideal is that it is not conservative. Conservatives are practical and realistic. They are not dreamy and delusional. They acknowledge reality and try to find the best ways to ameliorate it. In economics they adhere to a few bedrock realities, like supply and demand and reject the idea that you can spend unlimited amounts of taxpayer money and not ever have to pay it back. In social policy they accept the simple reality that there are two sexes and reject the belief that there are some 75 different genders, the exact number depending on the time of day.

They accept the idea of Original Sin and that life and politics will never be perfect. Delusional perfection is the province of the Left: it is the Left's job to deny Original Sin and to constantly be casting some unrealistic vision of perfection that everyone knows really does not and cannot exist.

If the Republicans really want to succeed as conservatives, they should focus on the amelioration of the imperfect not the installation of the ideal. The Gnostic Republicans now making a bold stand against reality should stand down and deal with things as they are not as they wish they could be. 

Saving the Quid Pro Quos from Bribery and Extortion

You just can't say that Latin isn't relevant anymore.

On "This Week" with George Stephanopolous, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney tried to defend the Democrats rhetorical strategy last week of shifting their terminology. After focus groups showed that the Latin expression "quid pro quo" didn't elicit the negative feelings that terms such as "extortion" and "bribery" did, these latter two terms went to head to head in the finals and bribery won.

That's why you don't hear Democrats using the Latin expression anymore.

Of course, there are some non-Latin speaking Americans who wish the whole impeachment debate was being conducted in Latin so that they could think of something more important (and less political).

Maloney said this: "Quid pro quo is Latin for bribery." Now the fact that Maloney said this is interesting, but not only because it's completely inaccurate. I've discussed this expression elsewhere, but I'll underscore again that quid pro quo means "something for something." It refers to any action in which something is exchanged for something else of similar value. That would include virtually any economic exchange involving money or barter.

The Latin word for bribery is conruptela, a completely different Latin word. Bribery is one very specific kind of quid pro quo or economic exchange―namely one in which subornation is involved. Subornation happens when someone convinces someone else to do something unethical or illegal.

Bribery = quid pro quo + subornation

What would it mean to say that President Trump's quid pro quo with Zalensky (if there really was one, which wouldn't surprise me) constituted bribery? The literal application of saying that the President's action was bribery is saying that the President was offering something to Ukraine President Zelensky in order to get Zelensky to do something illegal or unethical. It is that President Trump was offering something in order to get that person to do something illegal―to suborn an illegal action. But what Trump was trying to get Zalensky to do was not illegal at all: He was trying to get him in investigate whether someone committed a corrupt act. 

Since when is that illegal?

It actually would have been more accurate to have settled on the term "extortion," since that involves trying to get something from someone by force or threats. But it just didn't appeal to the Democrats' focus groups―you know the ones I'm talking about: the ones who are now guiding the impeachment process.

But, of course, the extortion argument has its problems too. As I said last week, if withholding aid from a country in order to get them to do what you want them to do (and cutting it when they don't) was a crime, then it is one that administrations commit on a routine basis, and the question then becomes, if you think Trump's so called "extortion" was illegal, where have you been all these years?

The Democrats are shifting their terminology in order to gain a more pronounced political effect while claiming that they're not actually saying anything different. That's why they are saying that quid pro quo means the same thing as bribery when, in fact, it doesn't. 

But it has another benefit. Surely they figured out, after a little thinking about this, that staking their case on the mere charge that there was a quid pro quo in a foreign aid context was not going to do. In addition to bribery sounding more sinister than a quid pro quo, there is no law that prohibits quid pro quos, while there are laws that prohibit bribery and extortion.

The bad thing about it for the Democrats is that it raises the bar in terms of what they have to prove. Now, if they find that there was a quid pro quo, the question is whether it involves bribery, which only a very limited, specific kind of quid pro quo.

And by the way, does it bother anyone that the Democrats are using focus groups to determine what crime they are charging the President with?

Almost literally, this is what happened here: Instead of consulting the law or the Constitution, or some official enactment of our Glorious Republic in order to determine what crime the President may have committed, the Democrats hired consultants, gathered together some accountants, a banker or two, some construction workers and a grocery store clerk and asked them which words they thought sounded the most scary.

It's so ... Hamiltonian (referring to the musical not the actual person).

Meanwhile President Trump―more a danger to himself than to others―squandered some of his good will this week (whatever is left out there) tweeting against the former Ukraine secretary whom the Democrats had brought before the committee for the very purpose of trying to show how mean Trump had been to her. 

Of course, this had nothing to do with whether Trump committed any crime, much less any impeachable one. But still, the Democrats whole partisan point was to embarrass him as much as possible. It's a measure of Trump's carelessness that he facilitated the accomplishment of this goal in the very act of trying to prevent them from doing it.

And imagine being a Republican on the committee trying to defend the President and having to sit there while the President undermines you in the very act of defending him.

If you think it's hard being Trump's enemy, you should try being his friend some time. 

But all of this is consistent with what I have been saying all along: that the Democrats Impeachment strategy is a campaign strategy and not a legal or Constitutional strategy. These impeachment hearings are not designed to turn Trump out of office. That's not going to happen and the Democrats know it. The Democratic House can vote articles of impeachment to their heart's content, but the Republican Senate is not going to convict him.

The Democrats use of the impeachment process is not a serious constitutional endeavor; it is a campaign tactic for 2020, and there are a lot of Americans who realize this.

The Democrats are using a function of government for partisan gain. And isn't that what they are claiming the President was doing?

Matt Bevin and His Fashionable Media Enemies

The fact that there is liberal bias in the mainstream media is not exactly headline news, nor is the idea that it has been going on a long time. But there is one noticeable difference in the liberal media now as opposed to, say, twenty years ago.

It used to be that reporters saw themselves as unbiased and were just unaware of the attitudes that made their way into their stories. But that pretense has pretty much been abandoned in the Twitter age. Reporters now regularly Tweet their real feelings, and, surprise surprise, they are almost exclusively left in their political orientation.

This manifests itself in a lot of different ways, but one them is to take note of things conservatives do that they say they consider objectionable which they never seem to notice their ideological soulmates doing, despite the fact that they do it as well. To put it bluntly, the rules conservative Republicans are completely different from those for liberal Democrats. 

A liberal runs the race without impediment, but as soon as the conservative approaches the hurdle, it is raised a foot or two.

I recently got into a Twitter war with several reporters, one with the Courier-Journal, and two others with the Lexington Herald-Leader, who had tweeted about the infamy of a group supporting Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin producing a campaign ad assailing Andy Beshear's support for a piece of legislation (the so-called "Equality Act") that would "destroy girls sports" by allowing biological males to compete in women's competition.

Actually two of them tweeted about this. The other just chimed in.

Now there are a number of legitimate ways to attack this ad. You could argue that it makes assertions that are not true. You could question whether it would really "destroy girls sports." You could throw doubt on the fact that the  the "Equality Act" would allow men into women's competition. You could try to undermine the implication that Andy Beshear really supports such a thing.

All that would have been perfectly rational. But what did they do instead? Here was Daniel DeRochers with the Herald-Leader:

Instead of deploying an actual argument, Desrochers does what most progressives now do, which is engage in virtue-signaling, in this case, by accusing Bevin supporters of being "transphobic." 

"Transphobic" is a term made up by gender ideologues who, lacking the integrity to establish their positions rationally, instead invent Devil words to try to scare away anyone who has the temerity to appeal to reality.

It's an invented word designed by ideologues for ideological purposes. It is considered legitimate solely on the grounds that is used so often by all the right people. It's the word you say in order to drive thoughts about the actual biology of the situation from your mind. 

If you analyzed its Latin and Greek etymology it would mean something like "fear of change." But if you analyzed its actual usage you would get something like "Don't confuse us with your stinkin' science." 

To the progressives in the media (as with all progressives), opposition to the kooky assertions of gender ideology is proof of moral turpitude. If you disagree with the fashionable opinions on gender, you are evil. "Transphobia" is not just a disease (soon, surely, to be recognized by the increasingly politically correct medical authorities), it is a moral sickness. It is simply not possible to honestly believe that someone cannot decide what sex they are.

"Transphobia" is a cross that politically correct progressives wave in the face of the evil conservative vampire in order to make him cringe. And it often works when it's done to weakly-constituted Republicans.

Then there was the Courier-Journal's Mandy McLaren:

So just taking a position on the unfairness of biological males competing in women's sports constitutes bullying of transgender people?

All this means is that disagreeing with the fashionable opinions of liberals is now considered a thought crime, and is to be dealt with by hurling epithets like "transphobic." Just say the word and all those bigots who don't take their gender ideology medicine scatter.

I asked what, specifically, was wrong with the ad, which was followed shortly by this from Desrochers:

Well, first of all, there is no explanation of how the ad "exploits fear and misunderstanding of trans people." The ad just expresses opposition to biological males competing in women's athletic events, and calls attention to the fact (undisputed by Desrochers and McLaren) that Andy Beshear supports a bill that would (again undisputed) encourage or mandate this. Again is the mere opposition to such a thing bigotry? Is Martina Navratolova, who has called this practice "insane," a bigot? And even if it did, is it any more egregious a moral act than calling people "transphobic," as if they have some kind of psychological disease?

Let me just say this: I don't think Desrochers even believes any of this. Virtue-signaling is inherently disingenuous, which is just a way of saying that the people who do it really don't mean it. It's one of those perfunctory gestures you are expected to make when you are a political reporter at a liberal newspaper, which accounts for the weak defense he put up for it when I challenged him.

Note that he pairs the "fear and misunderstanding" charge, which he doesn't even try to justify (and for which there is really no case to be made anyway) with "in order to score political points." Scoring political points in a campaign ad? How shocking and unusual.

Is there a politician somewhere who doesn't do this? Again, this is just hand-waving. But somehow combining one charge that makes no sense with another charge that is virtually meaningless, we're supposed to think that it is a meaningful statement.

The real crime is to believe that boys are boys and girls are girls. In a world now apparently run by crazed professors out of some Womens' and Gender Studies department somewhere, this is a hanging offense.

Of course, the Twitter comments of McLaren and Desrochers are flatly partisan, showing, as I said before, that the partisan masks are off. But we're still supposed to believe that their reporting is objective.

It's not impossible, of course, but its getting harder and harder to believe.

And finally, let's just observe that any stick is good enough to beat a conservative gubernatorial candidate with. If there were a liberal Democrat running who took the side of the women who have complained about the unfairness, nothing would have been said.

That's how it works in places like the Herald and the Courier. And it's one of the reasons they have become largely irrelevant.

A Review of Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed, Part I

Patrick Deneen's new book, Why Liberalism Failed, has caused a bit of a stir, largely because it implicates thinking of those on both sides of the political spectrum on the problem of what is wrong with our culture. It won't make those who call themselves conservatives happy and it won't make those who call themselves liberals happy either. And the reason for this is that conservatism—at that strain of conservatism that fashions itself "libertarian"--shares the same basic assumption as the liberals.

The difference between liberals and libertarians—as I have said many times—is only three or four letters.

In fact the reason I'm blogging on it now, is my recent Twitter exchange with Andrew Walker, the former Baptist ELRC director who recently left that organization to return here to Kentucky to take a position with his alma mater, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Andrew and I worked together as lobbyists several years ago, and so we know each other well. I took the opportunity of yanking his chain about a tweet with an endorsement (and link) to Paul D. Miller's "Against 'Conservative Democracy'," an article which was remarkable largely for its lack of insightfulness. I see he has since redeemed himself by tweeting a link to the far more insightful thinker, the British philosopher Roger Scruton, even though what Scruton says and what Miller says are quite different, if not completely inconsistent.

Anyway, it prompted me to ahead and start on Deneen's book, which I will be reviewing in several posts over the next week or so.

Deneen takes an admittedly hard line against our twin liberalisms, one espoused by Democratic progressives and the other espoused by people who call themselves conservatives but whose thought bears little similarity to the thought of Edmund Burke and T. S. Eliot, the thinkers between whom Russell Kirk sandwiched the history of conservatism in what remains the greatest book about conservatism yet written: The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. Most people who call themselves conservatives in the United States, in fact, are no different in their fundamental assumptions about politics--a prominent theme of Deneen's book. 

The central tenet of the book is that liberalism is immolating itself in the flame of "freedom" and more liberalism will just feed the fire. The problems with liberalism are inherent in its very nature, and cannot therefore be solved by anything within liberalism. "Liberalism," he says, "has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself." The "ruins it has produced are the signs of its very success."

The aspect of this book that I suspect will be most suspect—at least among conservatives—is the implications of his analysis for America itself. America "is the first nation founded by the explicit embrace of liberal philosophy, whose citizenry is shaped almost entirely by its commitment and vision."

According to Deneen, what we are seeing now in what all sides of the political spectrum recognize as, if not a crisis, at least a problem, is the breakdown of an ideology, and the kind of breakdown common to all ideologies:

Among the few iron laws of politics, few seem more unbreakable than the ultimate unsustainability of ideology in politics. Ideology fails for two reasons—first, because it is based on a falsehood about human nature, and hence can't help but fail; and second, because as those falsehoods become more evident, the gap grows between what the ideology claims and the live experience of human beings under its domain until the regime loses legitimacy.

Deneen argues that this is indeed what is happening: Liberalism is based on a false view of human nature and now in a crisis of confidence in politics, economics, education, and science and technology.

We'll talk about how in the next post.

Suffice it to say for now that the book is about not just the failure of liberalism and the inevitability of that failure, but also about the nature of true conservatism.

In what way was #Trump NOT exonerated?

So we're all hearing now that today's letter by Attorney General William Barr quotes Robert Mueller's saying that while his report "does not conclude Trump committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

What does that even mean?

The word "exonerate" comes from two Latin words: ex: "out of, from", and onus: "burden." The original sense--and the sense of common usage--is the idea of a burden being taken away.

Legal Exoneration
In other words, the question is, has a burden been taken away from President Trump? Certainly the legal burden has been taken away. He has been legally exonerated. Period. That's not even an issue.

So is there some other sense in which he has not been exonerated? There are two other senses in which he might not have been exonerated.

Moral Exoneration
He might not have been morally exonerated. In other words, maybe the President did something Mueller thought was wrong, but not illegal. Maybe that's what he means. It wouldn't exactly surprise anybody if Trump did something wrong. But, of course, no one has appointed Mueller Lord Chamberlain either. His role simply does not encompass judging the morality of the President's actions. So it is hard to think that Mueller was using it in this sense.

Of course, the criticism of anyone--including Trump--by Washington politicians is always a little ironic. If you're going to morally judge other people, doing it from Washington, D.C., not exactly the bastion of morality, is kind of hard to take seriously.

In addition, the President's political enemies didn't merely claim the President did something wrong. They said he did something illegal, and the guy charged with spending two years and millions of dollars looking under every rock to see if he did that has said he can't find that he did. There is "insufficient evidence" to support that claim. The facts don't support the contention that the President did something illegal. So, if the facts don't do that, then what does?

Political Exoneration
Trump might also be said not to be politically exonerated. In other words the burden of the political charges against him (and now that the burden of the legality of the charges has been taken away, all that's left is the political). But then, you can spin political charges all day, and there's no equivalent of Mueller and his legal team to verify any of it. When it comes to political charges, there is literally no accountability. Political exoneration is meaningless in a partisan world. Anybody can say anything. So whether he is politically exonerated is neither here nor there.

Trump's political enemies will do their best to obscure the fact that the expectations they themselves set up for this investigation were exploded today. That's what they do. There was literally nothing Mueller could have done short of finding conclusion evidence that he committed crimes that would have pleased them.

So moral exoneration doesn't make sense, since Mueller is not qualified to make that judgment. Political exoneration doesn't make sense, since it is meaningless. The only question here is whether the President was legally exonerated, which he unquestionably was.

The rest is just Wolf Blitzer blowing smoke.

#Donald Trump may be down but he is not out

My most recent piece at Intellectual Takeout:

Trump's lack of popularity is no surprise. Of course, he has brought much of this on himself. With the help of a hostile media, it is understandable why he can't seem to break the 45 percent ceiling. The result has been predictions of an imminent loss of the White House by Republicans, and that explains the burgeoning crowd of Democratic presidential primary challengers we see blocking the horizon.

Under normal circumstances, the prognostications of Republican disaster would ring true. How can a president with popularity as low as Trump's have any hope at all? 

Writing in the Jan. 10 Wall Street Journal, columnist Daniel Henninger explains why it is the Trump shouldn't be counted out--at least not yet.

Read the rest here.

Why is America Divided? Are contemporary political debates really more divisive?

My newest post at Intellectual Takeout:

In one sense political divisiveness has always been with us. The United States was birthed in political animosity ... 

... So why do we think the divisiveness of modern politics is so historically unique? How can some people say that the debates of our own time are worse than those which not infrequently consummated in two men firing pistols at each other? 

Is there some sense in which contemporary political debates are divisive in a way the older ones were not? How exactly does the attack on Fox News host Tucker Carlson's home differ from a duel?

Read the rest here.

It's time for the Republicans to show what they're made of

As I write this, another accuser has come forth accusing Kavanaugh of sexual impropriety. This one from college. Like the Ford charge, there are manifold problems, among them the lack of corroboration. They are charges that would have no force in a court of law and the Ramirez charge shouldn't even have been published by the normal standards of journalism (or at least the ones that used to be normal until ideology completely consumed ethical considerations among America's left-wing media).

In fact, there was a reason several other major mainstream news sources passed on the Ramirez charges (at least according to several reports): There was simply no corroboration of the charge and she wasn't even certain of what had happened until she had six days with people who had a political interest for her to remember it just right before she had any "clarity."

If these charges prove enough for Republicans to back down, then no one is safe. No conservative nominee will ever be confirmed.

Let's be clear on a couple of things.

First, we would not be where we are if Republican leaders in the Senate had done what they were supposed to do, which was to stick with proper protocol and go ahead with the originally scheduled vote. In diddling around they have lent credence to charges that of themselves have little credibility.

This is what happens when you don't have the courage of your convictions and instead start putting political calculation above what you know to be right. If they had gone ahead with the originally scheduled vote, the Ford charges would rightly be receding in the rear-view mirror of ignobility, and Ramirez would still be sorting out whether anything really happened.

Second, Tucker Carlson is right. I normally refrain from quoting Fox News hosts, since journalistic standards there can sometimes be as low as those at CNN. But it's a fact: If congressional Republicans can't confirm Kavanaugh, then there is no reason to vote for them.

In fact, Republican voters should pledge not to vote for any candidate who doesn't support Kavanaugh. Some of these people don't come with backbones and they need to be provided with them by the voters. Kavanaugh does not deserve having his life destroyed because Republicans couldn't stand up for him

Yes, Republicans are in a dilemma, but they are the ones who put themselves in it in the first place. Now their choice is between placating the left or responding to their conservative constituency. Choosing the former means they're irrelevant. Choosing the latter will cost them, but they will only have themselves to blame. 

Letting the left win now will only mean that they will win again and again and again.

What difference will a conservative majority in Frankfort make?

My opinion piece on the prospects for conservative issues in this years Kentucky General Assembly ran in the Louisville Courier-Journal today:

On election day this year, Kentuckians voted to clean out the Augean stables and sent a hundred years of cronyism, backroom deals, and abuse of legislative procedure down the river of history.The change of power in the Kentucky House, complete a trifecta of Republican victories that began with the takeover of the Senate in 2000.
What difference will it make?

Read the rest here.

How an Ancient Philosopher Predicted the Outcome of the #2016Election

My newest post at Intellectual Takeout: 

Many people depend upon polls to predict the outcome of elections. What pollsters do appeals to all the prejudices of the post-Enlightenment modern mind: They employ a distinctive technique (thank you Rene Descartes), they focus on empirical evidence (thank you Francis Bacon), and they invoke the mathematical forms of statistics (thank you John Graunt and William Petty).  

But the responsibility for making an accurate prediction of this year's election might better have been put into the hands, not of a pollster, but a philosopher.

Read the rest here.

Why Trump Should Win Tonight's Debate

There are several reasons that, barring some major gaffe on Trump's part, he should win the debate tonight with Hillary Clinton.

First, all you have to do to win this kind of debate is exceed expectations. As it stands now, the expectations for Trump's performance are lower than Hillary's, giving him a much lower bar to clear.

Second, Hillary faces a dilemma that Trump does not: She either plays it conservative, in which case she appears too boring and Establishment, or she plays it aggressive and tries to trash-talk Trump, in which case she will get the short end of the stick because no one can out trash-talk Trump.

Given these realities, Trump's strategy should be purely reactive: If Hillary remains docile, just stand there, make a few policy statements and look presidential, in which case he will have exceeded the expectations. If Hillary goes on the attack, then deploy the email scandal, the Bengazi scandal, the Goldman Sachs connection, and her husband's Bimbo scandal, in which case he will at least neutralized her attacks and possibly draw blood.

Thirdly, Each candidate comes with a constructive and destructive narrative and both will be trying to play to one and downplay the other. Hillary's positive narrative is that she is competent and tested; her negative one is the mirror image: she is an establishment figure who skirts ethical rules and gets away with legal transgressions that mere mortals would do time for. Trump's positive narrative is that he is an anti-establishment figure bent on shaking things up; his negative narrative is that he is impulsive and reckless with his words and a lightweight when it comes to the serious policy work it takes to be the leader of the Free World.

That's pretty much a draw. However, Hillary has one more narrative working against her, and it has to do with her health. Up until about a week ago, I thought her health really was a tempest in a teapot that no one really cared about. But I think that I thought that because I didn't care about it. As has become evident, a lot of people do care about it. The video of her collapsing as she got into a car made it an issue.

This debate is supposed to be 90 minutes without commercials. Do they even get a potty break? If not, Hillary has another dilemma: If she drinks water before the debate, then she's going to need one (remember the several times in the primary debates when she disappeared from the set?); if she does not drink water, she faces the problem of dehydration, in which case she faces the problem of passing out again (this was the reason given for collapsing in the now famous video).

Again, Trump doesn't face the same dilemma. If we can go by past experience, he can hold it--and he is more likely to make other people pass out than to do so himself. In fact this is the one thing that could completely change this election: If Hillary collapses or shows any significant evidence of fatigue or physical weakness, this election could well be over. 

Finally, even if there is a gaffe, there is going to be an automatic double standards for the candidates that, once again, favors Trump; namely, that Trump can get away with gaffes that Hillary cannot. In fact, gaffes are such a regular part of Trump's rhetorical repertoire that the gaffe is going to have to be a big one in order to be news at all, whereas Hillary will be hurt by even a moderately serious gaffe, since her strength is stability and experience.

And of course this plays back into the expectations game.

Trump has more to gain and less to lose than Hillary, making him the favorite to win.

My comments in the Washington Post today on the Paul/Gray KY Senate Race

Lexington, KY Mayor Jim Gray

I was quoted in the Washington Post today about the Rand Paul/Jim Gray Senate race. The story centers on the fact that Gray is a gay candidate, one of a record number of gay candidates running for state and local offices.

The narrative is basically that the number of gay candidates running for office is an indication of greater acceptance of gays in our society. That's true as far as it goes, but my point was that Gray is not a "gay candidate" in the sense that he runs on the issue:

“He’s never run as a gay candidate,” said Martin Cothran, spokesman for The Family Foundation of Kentucky, a socially conservative group. “It’s not something he’s ever worn on his sleeve … For that reason, he’s not identified with gay issues.”

I also pointed out to the reporter that what social conservatives care about is where the candidate stands on the issues, not what their sexual preference is. That being said, I also pointed out that wearing the gay label on your sleeve probably wouldn't help a statewide candidate in Kentucky, largely because they would take that as an indication of where they stood on the issues.

Read more here.

Is Mike Pence really a "principled conservative"?

Trump has picked Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate. In response, U. S. Senate President Mitch McConnell, Kentucky's senior senator stated, "Pence is a principled conservative, man of faith, and talented messenger for Republican ideas."

Um, well, if he was a principled conservative, why did he wimp out in the defense of his state's religious freedom bill, agreeing to a change that made Indiana less friendly to religious freedom, not more? And if he was a "talented messenger," why wasn't he able to hold his ground on it?

You can't rightly call conservative politicians principled if, when the debate get's heated, they bail on you. It's easy to stand for things you don't have to fight for. It's what you do when you're faced with opposition that tells you just how principled you are.

Pence failed that test. 

What Trump Knows that the Establishment Doesn't and How it Explains Why He's Winning

One of the problems with the national Republican Party today is that they don't know why people vote the way they do. This problem has been on clear display in the complete miscalculation of the strength of Donald Trump, not to mention the miscalculation about how well Jeb Bush would do.

Here's the problem: The Republican Party thinks that people vote with their heads, when, in fact, they vote primarily with their hearts—or, we might say, their gut.

The trend in the national Republican Party has been to increasingly shun the kinds of issues that are helping Democrats to win. As Democrats ramp up their social agenda, Republicans are dialing theirs down. Their increasing inclination to downplay social issues means that they are knocking out the third leg from the set of political pillars that Reagan established: smaller government, stronger defense, and traditional values. 

This is where the national Republican Party seems bent on going wrong and why they will continue to lose elections. They now sit on a two-legged stool, and wonder why it keeps tipping over.

The Republicans increasing tendency to abandon the field on social issues leaves only one party with any gut appeal—with the exception, of course, of one candidate: Donald Trump. Trump is an anomaly because not only does he emphasize gut issues, but they're about the only ones he does emphasize.

Aristotle devised a whole lexicon for this. In his book Rhetoric, he spoke of the three modes of persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos. These are the three ways in which we are persuaded: the first is that we accept what the speaker says because of the speaker's character, his ethos. We believe him because he convinces us that he is good, or trustworthy, or knowledgeable, or credible in some way. This appeals to our wills. We believe in the man; the second is that we accept the rational appeal of the speaker, his logos. His arguments are rational and his evidence convincing. This is an appeal to our intellects. We believe his logic; the third way is that we desire to believe him—we are drawn by his pathos. H excites our passions. We believe in him because we want to believe in him. This is an appeal to our hearts, to our emotions. 

Aristotle, like the Christian thinkers who followed him hundreds of years later, believed that man's soul was made up of an intellect, a will, and an imagination. Each of the above appeals targets one of these, but it is the last one, pathos, that seems to give the speaker the greatest advantage. This is the lesson of Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: The ethos-based appeal of Brutus is completely overcome by Antony's appeal to his audience's emotions.

It is a principle that goes way back. St. Augustine said it over 1,500 years ago: Most people do what they want to to do. It is not rational arguments that determine their decisions. They don't do what they do because they have come to a logical conclusion that that's what they should do. Nor do they do what they do because they should do it. They do what they do primarily because it is what they desire to do.

This is why Bill Clinton, who felt our pain (pathos) beat the sturdy, dependable Bob Dole, a war hero (ethos). This is why Obama, the first Black president, who stressed social justice (pathos), beat Romney, all of whose rhetoric consisted of abstract argumentation about economics (logos).

In other words, pathos Trumps both logos and ethos. Pun intended.

Ronald Reagan implicitly understood this, which is why, while he offered arguments for his positions and exploited his affable, seemingly sincere personality to impressive effect, he never shunned emotional appeal. The introduction into the State of the Union address of the hero in the audience (which also exploited ethos) is just one example of this. I don't know that it is true to say it, but it at least seemed as if Reagan made mention of the abortion issue in almost every State of the Union speech. Abortion for him was a heart issue, and it was only one in an array of ways in which he was able to capture the hearts of his listeners.

The reason Reagan was the Great Communicator is because, rhetorically, he didn't leave anything out. 

Contrast Romney, the response of whose spokesmen was to change the subject whenever social issues like abortion came up, with Obama, whose party wore their social issues (a woman's "right" to abortion, gay rights, same-sex marriage) on their sleeves.

One could argue that the Democrats talk about economics as much as Republicans, but it works for Democrats in a way that it doesn't work for Republicans because, for the Democrats, economics has been converted into a social justice issue (support for a minimum wage and welfare programs, opposition to predatory lending, capital accumulation in the 1 percent, etc.).

In other words, even economics, traditionally a logos issue, is a pathos issue for Democrats.

This is why Hillary, who is fundamentally a boring technocratic liberal (similar, in her way, to Jeb Bush), is able to gain the benefits of pathos politics: Because the Democrats have positioned themselves on the moral high ground on even economic issues at a time when now equally technocratic Republicans aren't even contesting the moral high ground.

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently drew attention to a study by Pelin Kesebir and Selin Kesebir which found that moral words are slowing being eliminated from our political vocabulary and being replaced by economic words.

The study found that

general moral terms like “virtue,” “decency” and “conscience” were used less frequently over the course of the 20th century. Words associated with moral excellence, like “honesty,” “patience” and “compassion” were used much less frequently.

... Meanwhile, usage of words associated with the ability to deliver, like “discipline” and “dependability” rose over the century, as did the usage of words associated with fairness. The Kesebirs point out that these sorts of virtues are most relevant to economic production and exchange.

Yet in spite of this Democrats have retained a moral vocabulary while Republicans have abandoned their own moral voice. This allows them to push forward on their social agenda, often by taking positions that are ahead of their constituency. Republicans, on the other hand, almost never get out in front of their voters on heart issues, but almost always stay behind voter sentiment. Democratic leaders lead their voters when it comes to social issues; Republican leaders, fixated on abstract economic issues, follow theirs.

A case-in-point of this was a recent vote in the state legislature of my own state of Kentucky. A socially conservative bill was passed by the more conservative chamber. But while opponents of the bill spoke out openly and strongly against it, only the bill sponsor and one other lawmaker spoke up in its favor. It passed by a relatively wide margin, but an opportunity to articulate why such legislation is needed was missed. Next time, such a bill might still get by, but the liberal voices against it will get louder, and the conservative voices in its favor will get quieter. And when the voter sentiment for it appears to diminish (because no one is making the public case for it, even in victory) the voices in favor will finally be silenced completely, until finally such legislation will stand no chance at all.

Or ask yourself about the last survey you received in the mail from your Republican congressman or state lawmaker. Of the issues it gave you to choose which was the most important to you, did it include a single values issue? Did it even include the abortion issue?

Compare the Democrats fortitude in passing Obamacare, a vote that many Democrats had to know would cost them their seats—as well as pushing feminism and gay rights—to the continued conservative retreat on marriage, religious freedom, and traditional values in general.

Democrats move ahead and their voters follow them. Republican voters, in response, move backward and their political leaders follow in retreat. This creates a backward ratchet effect (to use George F. Will's analogy) for Republicans.

This is why the abandonment of pathos-based traditional values by the national Republican Party is a mistake, probably a fatal one. Which brings us back to Trump.

Trump is the Republican's pathos candidate. There is very little that is appealing about his arguments. In fact, he hardly seems to have any. His rhetoric is fractured and many times nonsensical. He is almost a logos-free candidate. Likewise,  his personal character is plainly not his strong suit. He shifts positions, insults his opponents, demeans women, and smears whole racial and religious groups. In short, he seems devoid also of ethos.

Trump's allure is pure pathos. His appeal is almost exclusively to the gut. As Mary Anastasia O'Grady recently pointed out, Trump has numerous similarities with the caudillo, the Latin American strongman, whose appeal is purely visceral. He's strong, fearless, seemingly independent of all outside control, and expert at exploiting the passions of his audience.

By comparison, the other Republican candidates have seemed bland and dispassionate. Bush is the best exemplar of this. He is boring. And even Cruz, who still talks about social issues, does not feature them prominently in his rhetoric.

For several election cycles, Republican voters have experienced pathos deprivation, and since the moderate/libertarian Republican establishment is doing nothing to cure it—and, in fact, seems bent on enhancing it—Trump is exploiting his own party's weakness to take control of it, and to put it in a better position to defeat the Democrat he will face in the fall.

Trump is like the monster in the movie Alien: He has insinuated himself into the body of the Republican Party, and after feeding off his political host, has now dramatically emerged onto the national stage, killing the Party in the process.

Unfortunately it is Republicans themselves who created the Political Immune Deficiency Syndrome (which I hereby deem "PIDS") that Trump is now exploiting. They destroyed whatever immunity they had from such a candidate through their own abandonment of the kinds of social positions that could have protected them. Yes, they vote for prolife bills when they come up. But try to get them to actively push back on the marriage issue or fight for religious freedom laws without conservative voters looking over their shoulders and see what happens.

There are some brave souls still out there (the State Senate in my home state of Kentucky, for example, has them in abundance). But the unwillingness of many of today's Republicans to fight for the traditional values positions that have characterized the Party since the Civil War is killing them. While liberal political leaders fight for the heart issues—even when they are unpopular and out of the mainstream, ostensibly conservative leaders tend to cut and run at the faintest whiff of opposition. 

Liberal leaders will fall on their swords for their cause if necessary; conservatives abandon theirs in their panicked flight from the front.

Now they are faced with a candidate for their own party's nomination who—even when he makes what to any political analyst (or common sense voter) would be considered a fatal mistake—never backs down. What Trump lacks in intellect and character, he more than compensates for in sheer audacity. His lack emphasis on logos and ethos will eventually catch up with him, but right now his pathos-fueled campaign has captured a pathos-starved voter base.

Had the Republican leaders had half the fortitude in fighting for the heart issues they inherited from Reagan that Donald Trump is now displaying in doubling down on politically toxic positions, they wouldn't be in the position they are in.

God help them.

#DonaldTrump and #SarahPalin are made for each other, unfortunately

I am apparently not the only conservative who Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump made want to go crawl in a hole somewhere. Robert Tracinski said it perfectly:

Palin’s first big speech on the national stage—the one she gave when she accepted the Republican nomination for vice-president—was carefully modulated, populist without being screechy, and sharply critical of Obama without being harsh or angry.

Her speech yesterday endorsing Trump was pretty much the opposite: rambling, pandering, chock full of empty catchphrases, combative, and screechy—I mean literally screechy, as in the grating quality of her voice, which was apparently her way of showing enthusiasm.

When CNN played it last night, I was looking at Trump's facial expression while he listened to her ramble on almost incoherently. I imagined him thinking to himself, "I hope that isn't what I sound like," a hope that would, alas, be in vain, since that is just what he sounds like to some of the rest of us.

Well, maybe not quite that bad. But they both possess the same limited vocabulary. They both use the same awkward rhetorical phrasings that betray them as intellectually unserious people, neither of whom, I am willing to bet, have cracked a book in years, not even Trump's favorite one.

In fact, ten bucks says that both of them have written more books than they have read, which is to say, not very many.

You don't necessarily want an intellectual as president. We tried the "best and the brightest" thing, and it didn't work out too well. In fact, it was a man who the media derided as a know-nothing that is considered now even by many liberals as a great president: Ronald Reagan.

But Reagan, unlike Trump and Palin, was a voracious reader. He knew what he believed and why he believed it. Yes, he loved to read Louis L'Amour novels. I take in an occasional western myself (Elmer Kelton rules!). But Reagan had read many of the great economic and conservative classics--no, not Going Rogue or The Art of the Deal, or the latest Glenn Beck book), but Russell Kirk, F. A. Hayek, Wilhelm Roepke, Frank Meyer, Whitaker Chambers, Ludwig von Mises, Malcolm Muggeridge, Frédéric Bastiat, and Henry Hazlitt. And he was well-versed in conservatism in general from being a frequent and long-time reader of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s National Review magazine.

This is the main reason the frequent comparisons of Trump to Reagan are so manifestly absurd. The next time you hear someone make this comparison, remind them that Reagan was actually literate.

Jake's World: KY Democrats too right-wing

I love Jake (seriously). Here is his analysis of Tuesday's election:

This is how Kentucky voted, like it or not. It’s not some liberal utopia. The Commonwealth is where a majority of Democrats admit to voting on the basis of race. The state where Democrats made the 2004 anti-gay marriage amendment a reality. Kentucky is where Jack Conway ran as teabagger-light twice and got his ass handed to him by actual teabaggers both times.

My theory is that he also wrote the script for Greg Stumbo's election night speech. They are equally delusional.

Fiorina first to draw Trump blood: And nine more takeaways from the CNN Republican Debate

#1: Carly won every exchange and nailed every opportunity she was given to speak, which is why she won this debate. Look for her to rise significantly in the polls, partly because of her great performance, and partly because it was done in front of a lot of people who hadn't seen her before.

#2: Trump was boring for the very first time in this campaign during the 2nd half of this debate. He appeared sidelined for much of that time. He was not the center of attention like we (and he) are used to. I don't think he helped himself in this debate.

#3: Rubio and Christie exceeded expectations.

#4: Huckabee was great but he didn't get enough time.

#5: Kasich and Walker were too bland and programmatic.

#6: Cruz was his usual machine-like self, with the flawless delivery and all, but he won't excite many people.

#7: Carson did well too. He knew the issues and didn't get tangled up with other participants.

#8: Rand Paul did better, but, over there on the left, he looked to far out of the action most of the night.

#9: The debate was at least 45 minutes too long.

#10: And back to Carly She drew blood from Trump for the very first time in this campaign. She is now officially the most effective weapon against Trump. She's going places.

The Great Political Twitch: Donald Trump and New Politics of Nihilism

Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark in "All the King's Men."

Rod Dreher at the American Conservative, mentioned that Donald Trump reminded him of Huey Long, the populist demagogue who served as governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932. This was amusing to me, since I had just finished Robert Penn Warren's All the Kings Men, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book that portrayed the political life of Willie Stark, a thinly disguised version of Long, from the perspective of the fictional Jack Burden, one of his close aides.

Dreher, partly because he is perspicacious, and partly because he is a Louisianan, saw in Long what I had seen when reading through the novel of Willie Stark―an inverted analogue of Trump.

In Warren's novel, Stark, a country boy and self-professed "hick," rises from mean circumstances to being a candidate for governor. But he suffers from the idea that the best way to reach the voters is intellectually, giving them arguments, facts, and figures. Politics to him is a cognitive enterprise, to be conducted by capturing people's intellects.

His aide Burden watches the bored crowds, listening to Stark in a numbed stupor.

One day, after giving another fact-filled speech, Stark asks Burden what he thinks of his speech and how things are going, and Burden gives him this advice:

"Yeah," I said, "I heard the speech. But they don't give a damn about that. Hell, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em think you're their weak, erring pall, or make 'em think you're God Almighty. Or make 'em mad. Even mad at you. Just stir 'em up, it doesn't matter how or why, and they'll love you and come back for more. Pinch 'em in the soft place. They aren't alive, most of 'em, and haven't been alive in twenty  years. Hell, their wives have lost their teeth and their shape, and likker won't set on their stomachs, and they don't believe in God, so it's up to you to tive 'em something to stir 'em up and make 'em feel alive again. Just for half an hour. That's what they come for. Tell 'em anything. But or Sweet Jesus' sake don't try to improve their minds.

One night, after a shell-shocked Burden finds out that his childhood sweetheart is having an affair with Stark, he gets in his car and drives west―through darkness and drizzle, ending up on his back in a hotel in Long Beach, California. He relives the events of his life and his childhood with the girl he loved, who, he now decides, was really no better than any other girl, and his love for her no more significant than any other feeling. There is not even any "better" or "worse" in the total scheme of a world that has no metaphysical order. Nothing, in fact, means anything:

...for names meant nothing and all the words we speak meant nothing, and there was only the pulse in the blood and the twitch of the nerve, like a dead frog's leg in the experiment when the electric current goes through.

Jack has discovered nihilism, or at least he has given its god a name: He calls it the "Great Twitch." Jack has really been a nihilist all along. His advice to Willie about how to give political speeches was nihilist advice: Apply some electric current to the voters, and they will feel alive again, or, like the frog, they will at least look like it.

Willie takes his advice, and in one of the most powerful scenes in the book, Stark ditches his facts and figures, and administers the electric shock therapy, telling the crowd that he's just like them, that he's angry with the establishment that plays people for fools, that he's going to stand for them against the powers that be. His speech ends with Willie's pages of facts and figures blowing away in the wind.

The change in tactics results in Stark's rapid ascent to power. His fiery populist rhetoric serves to give life to the lifeless who come to hear him.

Another Louisiana writer, Walker Percy, honed in on the nihilistic culture and the lifeless men and women who people it. Percy lived before the popularity of the zombie craze, but he would have seen in it the very image of modern men. The wise men of the twentieth century―Percy, John Updike, Phillip Roth, Flannery O'Connor (an honorary wise man), as well as early twentieth century existentialists such as Albert Camus―sent the dispatches home to tell us what we were: bored, purposeless, and dis-integrated

We spent most of the 20th century trying to fill the inner void, and developed entire industries to serve the purpose: the resort industry, the pornography industry, Hollywood.

In his classic "self help" book, Lost in the Cosmos, Percy noted that,

[b]ecause the self in the twentieth century is a voracious nought which expands like the feeding vacuole of an amoeba seeking to nourish and inform its own nothingness by ingesting new objects in the world but, like a vacuole, only succeeds in emptying it out.

Camus underscored the meaninglessness and absurdity of the modern condition when he opened his book The Myth of Sisyphus with these words: "There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide ... I have ever seen anyone die for the ontological argument ... On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living." There are plenty of people who commit suicide, of course, far more than in the previous ages that believed in God and recognized the existence of an ordered and meaningful world, but rather than commit suicide, most of us try to find various ways to pinch ourselves to assure us we're still here.

This is why Merseault, the protagonist in Camus' The Stranger, kills the Arab on the beach: "Because," he tells the judge, "of the sun." In other words, there is no reason. But it at least provides something to relieve the boredom of life.

The Great Twitch is in his nihilistic heaven and we humans here on earth go to ever more fantastic movies, or ever more extreme sports (note, despite the otherwise obsessive concern with safety in everything, the popularity of cage fighting), or watch pornography, or obsess about the climate, or join ISIS―anything to jolt ourselves alive.

But it never seems to last. Percy pointed to modern fashion as an example of how we try to fill up the emptiness, but never seem to be able to:

Gradually the new style becomes everyday, quotidian, rendered neutral. No matter how exotic it is, like a morsel to which an amoeba is attracted and which it surrounds and takes into itself, it is devoured and becomes part of the transparent flowing substance of the amoeba.

The empty utilitarianism of our education system, the cynicism of the political class, the self-righteousness of new politically correct commissars of gender and racial politics, all of these have helped create a society of people who aren't even alive, most of 'em, and who are seemingly in need of a pair of political or cultural jumper cables.

Hollywood feeds off of this need, and since politics is now an almost wholly-owned subsidiary of the entertainment industry, so does politics.

Unlike Stark, Trump is no hick (No one with a private 757 is a hick). But he has realized that what the voters need is something to jolt them out of their stupor. The modern electorate is jaded, and only the most extreme measures can now revive them. Only something entirely different can relieve their boredom. And Trump is not only different, he is outrageously different.

Peter McWilliams once said that boredom is "hostility without enthusiasm." The voters have long harbored a latent hostility, but now Trump is providing the enthusiasm.

Between the alternatives of weak, erring pal and God Almighty, Trump has chosen to offer himself up as the latter. He's making 'em mad, even mad at himself, which is why he doesn't care if he makes outrageous statements about people. He even thinks, after all the things he has said about Mexicans, that he can get the Latino vote (Shades of Stark calling his audiences whose votes he was asking for, "hicks"). He's stirring 'em up, not caring how or why, and their loving it and coming back for more.

He'll tell 'em anything, and, unlike everyone else running for president, he is certainly not trying to improve their minds. Hand it to him: He's figured this much out.

Donald Trump is the anti-Adlai Stevenson. He is Robert Penn Warren's Willie Stark turned upside-down.

But like all such jolts, it only last so long. Even the Greatest Twitches soon subside. The question is, how long will it take Trump to be taken into the nihilist cultural ameoba and become part of our transparent flowing substance.

Personally, I'm hoping it happens before the election.

How the War on Confederate Symbolism Contributes to Racial Tension

I'm thinking of offering a reward to the person who can trace the logical connection from the fact that there have been nine Black people killed in a South Carolina church by a crazed racist to the need for the removal of the Confederate flag from state capitols.

But even a very large reward would yield very little, since there really is no connection at all.

Amid all the news stories showing politicians striking Politically Correct poses for the cameras was one which captured the full significance of the debate over Confederate imagery: Warner Bros. has decided it will no longer sell toys and models of the car featured in the old Dukes of Hazzard television show (which the boys called "General Lee") which sported a Confederate flag on the roof.

We all know how many Black deaths resulted from people watching the Duke boys and going out on shooting sprees. Don't we?

Nobody is going to be hurt by the continued flying of the Confederate flag or statehouses and neither will they be helped. Not a single Black will be better off because Warner Bros. is discontinuing the use of the Confederate symbol--any more than eliminating Confederate imagery anywhere else will.

In fact, it does the exact opposite.

Giving in to demands to eliminate Confederate symbols not only does not help race relations, it hurts them. To continue to capitulate to what amount to political fashion statements devoid of any substance is to continue to feed racial tensions.

The groups that demand removal of the Confederate flag and the elimination of other Confederate symbols are groups that thrive on such tensions, which is why they aggravate them at every possible opportunity. They are a part of what George F. Will once called the "indignation industry." Racial grandstanders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and groups such as the NAACP (a group which used to actually help Blacks) would literally go out of business if racial tensions diminished. Consequently they have to constantly be ginning up false crises and pointing to imaginary racism they say all Whites harbor.

The only people the war on Confederate imagery helps are those in whose interest it is for Blacks and Whites to be at each other's throats. For many of these people, racial harmony would be bad for business.

Which is why capitulating to demands to remove Confederate symbols does one thing and one thing only: It enables the very racial animosities which we all say we should get over.

We've eliminated actual racists who, with only a handful of irrelevant exceptions, don't even exist anymore, so what else is there to do than attack regional symbols while pretending that they are a threat? It keeps the cause alive—and the donations coming in.

The Confederate flag long ago ceased to be thought of as a racist symbol, leaving its only symbolism that of regional pride. Their civilization destroyed and its homes and cities burned, Southerners have always harbored a healthy distrust of the centralized political power that was one of the unintended consequences of the Civil War. The Confederate flag is now little more than a statement of rebellion against Washington, DC.

If you want to throw gasoline on the rebellious spirit of the people whose flag symbolizes the spirit of rebellion, go after the Confederate flag. If you've ever been to South Carolina, you'll know what I mean. These are, after all, the very people who started the Civil War in the first place.

Of course, if you set these people off, then they'll get mad. And if they get mad, then they'll start defending themselves. And if they start defending themselves, then that will be pointed to as evidence of continuing racism. And if people believe there is continuing racism, then racial tensions will be aggravated.

But then that was the whole point. Wasn't it?

T. S. Eliot and the Politics of the Permanent Things

From "The Permanent Things of T. S. Eliot's Politics" at The Imaginative Conservative:

The expectation of change, in the twentieth century, has been greater than the expectation of continuity, nearly everywhere. And the permanent things, as Eliot called them—those enduring truths and ways of life and standards of order—are awash in the flood of sensual appetite and ideological passion. As Eliot expressed this phenomenon of decadence, referring to standards of education, in his book Notes towards the Definition of Culture, we are “destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in their mechanized caravans.” 

Read more here.