{"id":60935,"date":"2020-10-20T15:49:13","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T20:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=60935"},"modified":"2020-10-20T15:49:56","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T20:49:56","slug":"60935","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=60935","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

In Championing the Goodness of America, Trump Defines the Choice in This Election.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00c9tienne de La Bo\u00e9tie, who graced this planet from 1520\u20131563, may have died young, but he made his mark, mostly because he was best friends with Michel de Montaigne.<\/div>\n
It was Montaigne who helped assure the literary and political immortality of his friend\u2019s most important work, an essay called \u201cDiscours de la servitude volontaire\u201d (\u201cDiscourse on Voluntary Servitude\u201d).<\/div>\n
La Bo\u00e9tie\u2019s curious work has been an arrow in the quiver of anarchists and libertarians as well as classical liberals for centuries. It is an impassioned attack on tyranny, longer, perhaps, on denunciation than prudence but nevertheless a tonic reveille.<\/div>\n
Among other things, La Bo\u00e9tie points out that even those who are duly elected can be tyrants, a fact that was pressed home upon me from a recent visit to the state of Michigan, whose governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is the very model of the modern major mandarin.<\/strong><\/div>\n
Whitmer has issued hundreds and hundreds of executive orders that impinge on the quotidian freedoms of the people she was elected to serve (how ironic\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0sounds: they also serve who only play the scold).<\/strong><\/div>\n
Whitmer was recently upbraided by the Michigan Supreme Court for exceeding her authority.<\/strong><\/div>\n
Her response was to transfer that authority to the state public health establishment, which set about enforcing her edicts about mask-wearing, \u201csocial\u201d distancing, communal gatherings, quivering in place, and kindred impositions on liberty.<\/strong><\/div>\n

\u2018Voluntary Servitude\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u201cVoluntary servitude\u201d: isn\u2019t that where we find ourselves now? This is no \u201csocial contract,\u201d wherein we implicitly pledge allegiance to a regime in exchange for an escape from a sanguinary \u201cstate of nature\u201d and entrance to a realm of law and order.<\/div>\n
On the contrary, we find ourselves more and more subject to the extraordinary whims of those\u2014and they are legion\u2014who would be our masters, for our own good, we are told, but we can\u2019t help noticing it is also very much for\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0good, or at least their profit.<\/strong><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The depressing thing about voluntary servitude is the extent to which people actively conspire in forging their own manacles. To some large if indeterminate extent, many seem to crave the servitude, which can make it both difficult to discern and onerous to repeal.<\/div>\n
What La Bo\u00e9tie says about ancient tyrants applies to many modern aspirants as well. They \u201cshow themselves in public as seldom as possible\u201d he notes, \u201cin order to set up a doubt in the minds of the rabble as to whether they were not in some way more than man, and thereby to encourage people to use their imagination for those things which they cannot judge by sight.\u201d<\/div>\n
I thought about that as I contemplated the extreme economy practiced by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris when it comes to public appearances. \u201cOh, but people in Kamala\u2019s circle have been diagnosed with The Virus. That exempts her from mingling with the rabble, er, the voters.\u201d<\/div>\n
Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0and several people in his immediate circle contracted the\u00a0CCP Virus<\/a>\u00a0as well. How long was he out of action?<\/div>\n
Joe Biden\u2019s most memorable non-response to a question in recent days (if we exclude his refusal to say whether he would\u00a0pack the Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0if he were elected) is his \u201cI-have-no-response<\/a>\u201d to a reporter\u2019s question about the ongoing revelations about his son Hunter and his\u00a0excellent adventures<\/a>\u00a0in influence peddling and self-enrichment.<\/div>\n

\u2018Peaceful Protest\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Donald Trump, by contrast, is not shy about showing himself in public. This weekend, he presided over a major rally in Michigan. (Rally? Rally? Can one hold rallies in Gretchen Whitmer\u2019s Michigan? No, so the president was careful to call his rally a \u201cpeaceful protest\u201d out of consideration for Governor Whitmer\u2019s sensibilities.)<\/div>\n
The theme of the event (surely \u201cevent\u201d is sufficiently neutral) was \u201cSupporting the American Way of Life<\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n
That\u2019s provocative, isn\u2019t it? All of our teachers, the media, and the entire woke publicity apparatus would have us inject the phrase with a yeast of irony and contempt, for who can take \u201cthe American Way of Life\u201d seriously anymore?<\/div>\n
Donald Trump, for one, and also the thousands of people who show up to what once again are becoming non-stop rallies across the country.<\/div>\n
The president began by noting that one of the \u201cmost vital issues\u201d of the 2020 race was \u201cthe radical left\u2019s plan to erase American history, purge American values, and destroy the American way of life.\u201d<\/div>\n
Trump is right: they mean business (or to speak more accurately, they mean to make business impossible).<\/div>\n
As usual, the president spoke off-the-cuff. His rallies are like the river Meander. They digress and turn and double back. But they do make a point, or in this case two points, one negative, the other positive.<\/div>\n

\u2018Behavior of Fascists\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The negative point concerned the nature of the internal threats America faces\u00a0circa<\/em>\u00a02020.<\/div>\n
This race is not a typical contest between conservatives and liberals.<\/div>\n
The real issue is not tax policy or welfare payments or military expenditures.<\/div>\n
It is an existential battle between those who affirm the rudiments of the American dispensation\u2014a dispensation that emphasizes individual liberty, limited government, and the separation of powers\u2014and those who hate that dispensation and want to destroy it.<\/div>\n
The president is right. \u201cThe modern left does not use reason or persuasion to advance their cause. They use intimidation, coercion and control, and worse. They demand absolute allegiance or else.\u201d<\/div>\n
That is where \u201ccancel culture<\/a>\u201d comes in. It is, as President Trump said, \u201cone of the most sinister weapons of the extreme left.\u201d Its goal is to \u201ccancel our entire heritage.\u201d Hence the aroma of totalitarian intransigence that is part of its\u00a0modus operandi<\/em>. Acquiescence is not enough. At a moment when \u201csilence is violence<\/a>,\u201d active, enthusiastic boosterism is the minimum requirement for ideological absolution.<\/div>\n
\u201cThese are not,\u201d the president noted, \u201cthe tactics of a respectable political movement. This is the behavior of fascists. \u2026 The point of cancel culture is not to convince you, it\u2019s to humiliate you, and break you, and control you.\u201d<\/div>\n

\u2018Last Best Hope\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
This is true. But the question is whether the president is also right that \u201cthe American people will never submit, we will never apologize, and we will not be controlled, and never be broken.\u201d<\/div>\n
That, at the end of the day, is what this election is about.<\/div>\n
Donald Trump has a keener sense of the culture war\u2014the essentially Marxist assault on the institutions of American life\u2014than any president I can think of. He understands the nature and gravity of the assault, and he is not afraid to describe it forthrightly.<\/div>\n
He is able to do this because, in addition to grasping the negative, he also accentuates the positive.<\/div>\n
He knows, as he said in Michigan this last weekend, that \u201cAmerica is the most magnificent, most virtuous nation that has ever existed.\u201d<\/div>\n
That is not just hustings hyperbole. It is the truth.<\/div>\n
It does not, of course, mean that America is perfect, that it has somehow been exempt from the weaknesses, perversions, and evils that have blighted mankind throughout history.<\/div>\n
It does mean that those human-all-too-human failures have been offset by extraordinary accomplishments. \u201cWe\u2019ve liberated millions from tyranny,\u201d the president noted, \u201crescued countless millions all around the world from poverty, and built the most exceptional Republic in human history.\u201d<\/div>\n
Yes, there are those who dispute this. The 1619ers, the partisans of Antifa and Black Lives Mater, the people who look at America and see primarily an opportunity to extend their agenda of dependency.<\/div>\n
That\u2019s the choice we face in this election.<\/div>\n
It\u2019s between the people who want to compass the American past and present in a holocaust of racialist grievance-mongering, building hecatombs of repudiation in which Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln are indiscriminately cancelled, and, on the other side, those who affirm America not as utopia but as \u201cthe last best hope of earth<\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Championing the Goodness of America, Trump Defines the Choice in This Election.\u00a0 \u00c9tienne de La Bo\u00e9tie, who graced this planet from 1520\u20131563, may have died young, but he made his mark, mostly because he was best friends with Michel de Montaigne. It was Montaigne who helped assure the literary and political immortality of his … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60937,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60935\/revisions\/60937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}