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THE AMERICAN CREED

“I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; and to defend it against all enemies.”

William Tyler Page – April 13, 1918

From Greek tragedy to American therapy
October 6, 2016 2:49 pm / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
By Victor Davis Hanson // Town Hall
|
From Greek tragedy to American therapy

The Greeks gave us tragedy — the idea that life is never fair. Terrible stuff for no reason tragically falls on good people. Life’s choices are sometimes only between the bad and the far worse.

In the plays of the ancient dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles, heroism and nobility only arise out of tragedies.

The tragic hero refuses to blame the gods for his terrible fate. Instead, a Prometheus, Ajax or Oedipus prefers to fight against the odds. He thereby establishes a code of honor, even as defeat looms.

In contrast, modern Americans gave the world therapy.

Life must always be fair. If not, something or someone must be blamed. All good people deserve only a good life — or else.

A nation of victims soon becomes collectively paralyzed in fear of offending someone. Pay down the $20 trillion debt? Reform the unsustainable Social Security system? Ask the 47 percent of the population that pays no income tax to at least pay some?

Nope. Victims would allege that such belt-tightening is unfair and impossible — and hurtful to boot. So we do nothing as the rendezvous with financial collapse gets ever closer.

Does anyone think a culture of whiners can really build high-speed rail in California? Even its supporters want the noisy tracks built somewhere away from their homes.

Even animals get in on the new victimhood. To build a reservoir in drought-stricken California means oppressing the valley elderberry longhorn beetle or ignoring the feelings of the foothill yellow-legged frog.

America’s impoverished ancestors at 15 years of age may have rounded Cape Horn on a schooner or ridden bareback over the Rockies.

Not today’s therapeutic college youth. They have been so victimized by racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and other -isms and -phobias that colleges often provide them “safe spaces,” outlaw “microaggressions” and demand “trigger warnings” to avoid the un-nice.

What would our grandfathers think?

As teenagers on D-Day, they found no safe spaces on Omaha Beach. A storm of steel from thousands of SS killers proved more than a “microaggression” at the Battle of the Bulge. Generals did not give their freezing GIs mere “trigger warnings” about a half-million Chinese Red Army soldiers crossing the Yalu River during the Korean War.

American victimhood is the luxury of an affluent, secure and leisured postmodern society that can afford such silly indulgences.

Second-string San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick apparently assumes that his wealthy team can afford to pay him nearly $20 million a year to sit on the bench, without much caring that he can’t be bothered to stand up for the National Anthem.

But victimhood is a good career move. Kaepernick went from being a washed-up quarterback to being a much-publicized social justice warrior — a veritable Noam Chomsky in cleats opining on over two centuries of American criminal justice. He was once fined for reportedly smearing a fellow NFL player with the N-word, but now as a victim himself, Kaepernick can no longer be a victimizer.

During the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton blamed Donald Trump for body-shaming 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado two decades ago. Machado had reportedly gained more than 40 pounds and apparently made it hard for Trump’s beauty pageant to showcase her figure in promotional events.

America may be broke and plagued by riots and terrorism. No matter: It apparently can afford to fret over Machado’s 20 years of post-traumatic stress.

Once victimhood is established, we lose our identities and, as part of an offended collective, claim blanket exemption for all our imperfections.

In Machado’s case, what does it matter if such a victim allegedly threatened a Venezuelan judge, or was reportedly involved with a drug cartel leader, or became a campaign shill for the Clinton campaign?

All of that is nothing compared with the trauma of being called fat for not being able to fit back into the bikini that won her the Miss Universe crown and fame.

Sometimes the art of victimhood gets confusing. If we are all victims of some sort, who are left to be the victimizers?

Can victims victimize? Can gays be Islamophobic, Muslims homophobic, blacks racist, women sexist or Latinos xenophobic? If so, who is to sort out their relative rock/paper/scissors zero-sum grievances?

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Islamic State and the Chinese have no particular sympathy for any American who lays claim to victim status.

Nor do foreign buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the debt defer to America’s legions of victims. A nuclear bomb from North Korea or Iran will not sort us all out by race, class or gender, much less by victim and victimizer.

To appreciate American heroism, we might read Sophocles’ “Antigone” or E.B. Sledge’s “With the Old Breed” — and watch a lot less Sunday football.

After the Republic
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By: Angelo M. Codevilla
September 27, 2016

ver the past half century, the Reagan years notwithstanding, our ruling class’s changing preferences and habits have transformed public and private life in America. As John Marini shows in his essay, “Donald Trump and the American Crisis,” this has resulted in citizens morphing into either this class’s “stakeholders” or its subjects. And, as Publius Decius Mus argues, “America and the West” now are so firmly “on a trajectory toward something very bad” that it is no longer reasonable to hope that “all human outcomes are still possible,” by which he means restoration of the public and private practices that made the American republic. In fact, the 2016 election is sealing the United States’s transition from that republic to some kind of empire.

Electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump cannot change that trajectory. Because each candidate represents constituencies hostile to republicanism, each in its own way, these individuals are not what this election is about. This election is about whether the Democratic Party, the ruling class’s enforcer, will impose its tastes more strongly and arbitrarily than ever, or whether constituencies opposed to that rule will get some ill-defined chance to strike back. Regardless of the election’s outcome, the republic established by America’s Founders is probably gone. But since the Democratic Party’s constituencies differ radically from their opponents’, and since the character of imperial governance depends inherently on the emperor, the election’s result will make a big difference in our lives.

Many Enemies, Few Friends

The overriding question of 2016 has been how eager the American people are to reject the bipartisan class that has ruled this country contrary to its majority’s convictions. Turned out, eager enough to throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. The ruling class’s united front in response to the 2008 financial crisis had ignited the Tea Party’s call for adherence to the Constitution, and led to elections that gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republican Party. But as Republicans became full partners in the ruling class’s headlong rush in what most considered disastrous directions, Americans lost faith in the Constitution’s power to restrain the wrecking of their way of life.

From the primary season’s outset, the Democratic Party’s candidates promised even more radical “transformations.” When, rarely, they have been asked what gives them the right to do such things they have acted as if the only answer were Nancy Pelosi’s reply to whether the Constitution allows the government to force us into Obamacare: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?”

On the Republican side, 17 hopefuls promised much, without dealing with the primordial fact that, in today’s America, those in power basically do what they please. Executive orders, phone calls, and the right judge mean a lot more than laws. They even trump state referenda. Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably—the administrative state. As for the Supreme Court, the American people have seen it invent rights where there were none—e.g., abortion—while trammeling ones that had been the republic’s spine, such as the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. The Court taught Americans that the word “public” can mean “private” (Kelo v. City of New London), that “penalty” can mean “tax” (King v. Burwell), and that holding an opinion contrary to its own can only be due to an “irrational animus” (Obergefell v. Hodges).

What goes by the name “constitutional law” has been eclipsing the U.S. Constitution for a long time. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act substituted a wholly open-ended mandate to oppose “discrimination” for any and all fundamental rights, it became the little law that ate the Constitution. Now, because the Act pretended that the commerce clause trumps the freedom of persons to associate or not with whomever they wish, and is being taken to mean that it trumps the free exercise of religion as well, bakers and photographers are forced to take part in homosexual weddings. A commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that even a church may be forced to operate its bathrooms according to gender self-identification because it “could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.” California came very close to mandating that Catholic schools admit homosexual and transgender students or close down. The Justice Department is studying how to prosecute on-line transactions such as vacation home rental site Airbnb, Inc., that fall afoul of its evolving anti-discrimination standards.

This arbitrary power, whose rabid guard-dog growls and barks: “Racist! Sexist! Homophobic!” has transformed our lives by removing restraints on government. The American Bar Association’s new professional guidelines expose lawyers to penalties for insufficient political correctness. Performing abortions or at least training to perform them may be imposed as a requirement for licensing doctors, nurses, and hospitals that offer services to the general public.

Addressing what it would take to reestablish the primacy of fundamental rights would have required Republican candidates to reset the Civil Rights movement on sound constitutional roots. Surprised they didn’t do it?

No one running for the GOP nomination discussed the greatest violation of popular government’s norms—never mind the Constitution—to have occurred in two hundred years, namely, the practice, agreed upon by mainstream Republicans and Democrats, of rolling all of the government’s expenditures into a single bill. This eliminates elected officials’ responsibility for any of the government’s actions, and reduces them either to approving all that the government does without reservation, or the allegedly revolutionary, disloyal act of “shutting down the government.”

Rather than talk about how to restrain or shrink government, Republican candidates talked about how to do more with government. The Wall Street Journal called that “having a positive agenda.” Hence, Republicans by and large joined the Democrats in relegating the U.S. Constitution to history’s dustbin.

Because Republicans largely agree with Democrats that they need not take seriously the founders’ Constitution, today’s American regime is now what Max Weber had called the Tsarist regime on the eve of the Revolution: “fake constitutionalism.” Because such fakery is self-discrediting and removes anyone’s obligation to restrain his passions, it is a harbinger of revolution and of imperial power.

The ruling class having chosen raw power over law and persuasion, the American people reasonably concluded that raw power is the only way to counter it, and looked for candidates who would do that. Hence, even constitutional scholar Ted Cruz stopped talking about the constitutional implications of President Obama’s actions after polls told him that the public was more interested in what he would do to reverse them, niceties notwithstanding. Had Cruz become the main alternative to the Democratic Party’s dominion, the American people might have been presented with the option of reverting to the rule of law. But that did not happen. Both of the choices before us presuppose force, not law.

A Change of Regimes

All ruling classes are what Shakespeare called the “makers of manners.” Plato, in The Republic, and Aristotle, in his Politics, teach that polities reflect the persons who rise to prominence within them, whose habits the people imitate, and who set the tone of life in them. Thus a polity can change as thoroughly as a chorus changes from comedy to tragedy depending on the lyrics and music. Obviously, the standards and tone of life that came from Abraham Lincoln’s Oval Office is quite opposite from what came from the same place when Bill Clinton used it. Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm was arguably the world’s most polite society. Under Hitler, it became the most murderous.

In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like so long as the bureaucracy obeys and one third plus one of the Senate protects him from impeachment. If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers’ support. These cronies’ shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class’s chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.

And, because the ruling class blurs the distinction between public and private business, connection to that class has become the principal way of getting rich in America. Not so long ago, the way to make it here was to start a business that satisfied customers’ needs better than before. Nowadays, more businesses die each year than are started. In this century, all net additions in employment have come from the country’s 1,500 largest corporations. Rent-seeking through influence on regulations is the path to wealth. In the professions, competitive exams were the key to entry and advancement not so long ago. Now, you have to make yourself acceptable to your superiors. More important, judicial decisions and administrative practice have divided Americans into “protected classes”—possessed of special privileges and immunities—and everybody else. Equality before the law and equality of opportunity are memories. Co-option is the path to power. Ever wonder why the quality of our leaders has been declining with each successive generation?

Moreover, since the Kennedy reform of 1965, and with greater speed since 2009, the ruling class’s immigration policy has changed the regime by introducing some 60 million people—roughly a fifth of our population—from countries and traditions different from, if not hostile, to ours. Whereas earlier immigrants earned their way to prosperity, a disproportionate percentage of post-1965 arrivals have been encouraged to become dependents of the state. Equally important, the ruling class chose to reverse America’s historic practice of assimilating immigrants, emphasizing instead what divides them from other Americans. Whereas Lincoln spoke of binding immigrants by “the electric cord” of the founders’ principles, our ruling class treats these principles as hypocrisy. All this without votes or law; just power.

Foul is Fair and Fair is Foul

In short, precisely as the classics defined regime change, people and practices that had been at society’s margins have been brought to its center, while people and ideas that had been central have been marginalized.

Fifty years ago, prayer in the schools was near universal, but no one was punished for not praying. Nowadays, countless people are arrested or fired for praying on school property. West Point’s commanding general reprimanded the football coach for his team’s thanksgiving prayer. Fifty years ago, bringing sexually explicit stuff into schools was treated as a crime, as was “procuring abortion.” Nowadays, schools contract with Planned Parenthood to teach sex, and will not tell parents when they take girls to PP facilities for abortions. Back then, many schools worked with the National Rifle Association to teach gun handling and marksmanship. Now students are arrested and expelled merely for pointing their finger and saying “bang.” In those benighted times, boys who ventured into the girls’ bathroom were expelled as perverts. Now, girls are suspended for objecting to boys coming into the girls’ room under pretense of transgenderism. The mainstreaming of pornography, the invention of abortion as the most inalienable of human rights and, most recently, the designation of opposition to homosexual marriage as a culpable psychosis—none of which is dictated by law enacted by elected officials—is enforced as if it had been. No surprise that America has experienced a drastic drop in the formation of families, with the rise of rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites equal to the rates among blacks that was recognized as disastrous a half-century ago, the near-disappearance of two-parent families among blacks, and the social dislocations attendant to all that.

Ever since the middle of the 20th century our ruling class, pursuing hazy concepts of world order without declarations of war, has sacrificed American lives first in Korea, then in Vietnam, and now throughout the Muslim world. By denigrating Americans who call for peace, or for wars unto victory over America’s enemies; by excusing or glorifying those who take our enemies’ side or who disrespect the American flag; our rulers have drawn down the American regime’s credit and eroded the people’s patriotism.

As the ruling class destroyed its own authority, it wrecked the republic’s as well. This is no longer the “land where our fathers died,” nor even the country that won World War II. It would be surprising if any society, its identity altered and its most fundamental institutions diminished, had continued to function as before. Ours sure does not, and it is difficult to imagine how it can do so ever again. We can be sure only that the revolution underway among us, like all others, will run its unpredictable course.

All we know is the choice that faces us at this stage: either America continues in the same direction, but faster and without restraint, or there’s the hazy possibility of something else.

Imperial Alternatives

The consequences of empowering today’s Democratic Party are crystal clear. The Democratic Party—regardless of its standard bearer—would use its victory to drive the transformations that it has already wrought on America to quantitative and qualitative levels that not even its members can imagine. We can be sure of that because what it has done and is doing is rooted in a logic that has animated the ruling class for a century, and because that logic has shaped the minds and hearts of millions of this class’s members, supporters, and wannabes.

That logic’s essence, expressed variously by Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson, FDR’s brains trust, intellectuals of both the old and the new Left, choked back and blurted out by progressive politicians, is this: America’s constitutional republic had given the American people too much latitude to be who they are, that is: religiously and socially reactionary, ignorant, even pathological, barriers to Progress. Thankfully, an enlightened minority exists with the expertise and the duty to disperse the religious obscurantism, the hypocritical talk of piety, freedom, and equality, which excuses Americans’ racism, sexism, greed, and rape of the environment. As we progressives take up our proper responsibilities, Americans will no longer live politically according to their prejudices; they will be ruled administratively according to scientific knowledge.

Progressivism’s programs have changed over time. But its disdain for how other Americans live and think has remained fundamental. More than any commitment to principles, programs, or way of life, this is its paramount feature. The media reacted to Hillary Clinton’s remark that “half of Trump’s supporters could be put into a ‘basket of deplorables’” as if these sentiments were novel and peculiar to her. In fact, these are unremarkable restatements of our ruling class’s perennial creed.

The pseudo-intellectual argument for why these “deplorables” have no right to their opinions is that giving equal consideration to people and positions that stand in the way of Progress is “false equivalence,” as President Obama has put it. But the same idea has been expressed most recently and fully by New York Times CEO Mark Thompson, as well as Times columnists Jim Rutenberg, Timothy Egan, and William Davies. In short, devotion to truth means not reporting on Donald Trump and people like him as if they or anything they say might be of value.

If trying to persuade irredeemable socio-political inferiors is no more appropriate than arguing with animals, why not just write them off by sticking dismissive names on them? Doing so is less challenging, and makes you feel superior. Why wrestle with the statistical questions implicit in Darwin when you can just dismiss Christians as Bible-thumpers? Why bother arguing for Progressivism’s superiority when you can construct “scientific” studies like Theodor Adorno’s, proving that your opponents suffer from degrees of “fascism” and other pathologies? This is a well-trod path. Why, to take an older example, should General Omar Bradley have bothered trying to refute Douglas MacArthur’s statement that in war there is no substitute for victory when calling MacArthur and his supporters “primitives” did the trick? Why wrestle with our climate’s complexities when you can make up your own “models,” being sure that your class will treat them as truth?

What priorities will the ruling class’s notion of scientific truth dictate to the next Democratic administration? Because rejecting that true and false, right and wrong are objectively ascertainable is part of this class’s DNA, no corpus of fact or canon of reason restrains it or defines its end-point. Its definition of “science” is neither more nor less than what “scientists say” at any given time. In practice, that means “Science R-Us,” now and always, exclusively. Thus has come to pass what President Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his 1960 Farewell address: “A steadily increasing share [of science] is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.… [T]he free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution…a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” Hence, said Ike, “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded.” The result has been that academics rise through government grants while the government exercises power by claiming to act on science’s behalf. If you don’t bow to the authority of the power that says what is and is not so, you are an obscurantist or worse.

Under our ruling class, “truth” has morphed from the reflection of objective reality to whatever has “normative pull”—i.e., to what furthers the ruling class’s agenda, whatever that might be at any given time. That is the meaning of the term “political correctness,” as opposed to factual correctness.

It’s the Contempt, Stupid!

Who, a generation ago, could have guessed that careers and social standing could be ruined by stating the fact that the paramount influence on the earth’s climate is the sun, that its output of energy varies and with it the climate? Who, a decade ago, could have predicted that stating that marriage is the union of a man and a woman would be treated as a culpable sociopathy, or just yesterday that refusing to let certifiably biological men into women’s bathrooms would disqualify you from mainstream society? Or that saying that the lives of white people “matter” as much as those of blacks is evidence of racism? These strictures came about quite simply because some sectors of the ruling class felt like inflicting them on the rest of America. Insulting presumed inferiors proved to be even more important to the ruling class than the inflictions’ substance.

How far will our rulers go? Because their network is mutually supporting, they will go as far as they want. Already, there is pressure from ruling class constituencies, as well as academic arguments, for morphing the concept of “hate crime” into the criminalization of “hate speech”—which means whatever these loving folks hate. Of course this is contrary to the First Amendment, and a wholesale negation of freedom. But it is no more so than the negation of freedom of association that is already eclipsing religious freedom in the name anti-discrimination. It is difficult to imagine a Democratic president, Congress, and Supreme Court standing in the way.

Above all, these inflictions, as well as the ruling class’s acceptance of its own members’ misbehavior, came about because millions of its supporters were happy, or happy enough, to support them in the interest of maintaining their own status in a ruling coalition while discomfiting their socio-political opponents. Consider, for example, how republic-killing an event was the ruling class’s support of President Bill Clinton in the wake of his nationally televised perjury. Subsequently, as constituencies of supporters have effectively condoned officials’ abusive, self-serving, and even outright illegal behavior, they have encouraged more and more of it while inuring themselves to it. That is how republics turn into empires from the roots up.

But it is also true, as Mao Tse-Tung used to say, “a fish begins to rot at the head.” If you want to understand why any and all future Democratic Party administrations can only be empires dedicated to injuring and insulting their subjects, look first at their intellectual leaders’ rejection of the American republic’s most fundamental principles.

The Declaration of Independence says that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights—codified in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights—are not civil rights that governments may define. The free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and assembly, keeping and bearing arms, freedom from warrantless searches, protection against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, trial by jury of one’s peers, etc., are natural rights that pertain to human beings as such. Securing them for Americans is what the United States is all about. But today’s U.S. Civil Rights Commission advocates truncating the foremost of these rights because, as it stated in a recent report, “Religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon those civil rights.” The report explains why the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights should not be permissible: “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy, or any form of intolerance.”

Hillary Clinton’s attack on Trump supporters merely matched the ruling class’s current common sense. Why should government workers and all who wield the administrative state’s unaccountable powers not follow their leaders’ judgment, backed by the prestige press, about who are to be treated as citizens and who is to be handled as deplorable refuse? Hillary Clinton underlined once again how the ruling class regards us, and about what it has in store for us.

Electing Donald Trump would result in an administration far less predictable than any Democratic one. In fact, what Trump would or would not do, could or could not do, pales into insignificance next to the certainty of what any Democrat would do. That is what might elect Trump.

The character of an eventual Trump Administration is unpredictable because speculating about Trump’s mind is futile. It is equally futile to guess how he might react to the mixture of flattery and threats sure to be leveled against him. The entire ruling class—Democrats and Republicans, the bulk of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the press—would do everything possible to thwart him; and the constituencies that chose him as their candidate, and that might elect him, are surely not united and are by no means clear about the demands they would press. Moreover, it is anyone’s guess whom he would appoint and how he would balance his constituencies’ pressures against those of the ruling class.

Never before has such a large percentage of Americans expressed alienation from their leaders, resentment, even fear. Some two-thirds of Americans believe that elected and appointed officials—plus the courts, the justice system, business leaders, educators—are leading the country in the wrong direction: that they are corrupt, do more harm than good, make us poorer, get us into wars and lose them. Because this majority sees no one in the political mainstream who shares their concerns, because it lacks confidence that the system can be fixed, it is eager to empower whoever might flush the system and its denizens with something like an ungentle enema.

Yet the persons who express such revolutionary sentiments are not a majority ready to support a coherent imperial program to reverse the course of America’s past half-century. Temperamentally conservative, these constituencies had been most attached to the Constitution and been counted as the bedrock of stability. They are not yet wholly convinced that there is little left to conserve. What they want, beyond an end to the ruling class’s outrages, has never been clear. This is not surprising, given that the candidates who appeal to their concerns do so with mere sound bites. Hence they chose as the presidential candidate of the nominal opposition party the man who combined the most provocative anti-establishment sounds with reassurance that it won’t take much to bring back good old America: Donald Trump. But bringing back good old America would take an awful lot. What could he do to satisfy them?

Trump’s propensity for treating pronouncements on policy as flags to be run up and down the flagpole as he measures the volume of the applause does not deprive them of all significance—especially the ones that confirm his anti-establishment bona fides. These few policy items happen to be the ones by which he gained his anti-establishment reputation in the first place: 1) opposition to illegal immigration, especially the importation of Muslims whom Americans reasonably perceive as hostile to us; 2) law and order: stop excusing rioters and coddling criminals; 3) build a wall, throw out the illegals, let in only people who are vetted and certified as supporters of our way of life (that’s the way it was when I got my immigrant visa in 1955), and keep out anybody we can’t be sure isn’t a terrorist. Trump’s tentative, partial retreat from a bit of the latter nearly caused his political standing to implode, prompting the observation that doing something similar regarding abortion would end his political career. That is noteworthy because, although Trump’s support of the pro-life cause is lukewarm at best, it is the defining commitment for much of his constituency. The point here is that, regardless of his own sentiments, Trump cannot wholly discount his constituencies’ demands for a forceful turn away from the country’s current direction.

Trump’s slogan—“make America great again”—is the broadest, most unspecific, common denominator of non-ruling-class Americans’ diverse dissatisfaction with what has happened to the country. He talks about reasserting America’s identity, at least by controlling the borders; governing in America’s own interest rather than in pursuit of objectives of which the American people have not approved; stopping the export of jobs and removing barriers to business; and banishing political correctness’s insults and injuries. But all that together does not amount to making America great again. Nor does Trump begin to explain what it was that had made this country great to millions who have known only an America much diminished.

In fact, the United States of America was great because of a whole bunch of things that now are gone. Yes, the ruling class led the way in personal corruption, cheating on tests, lowering of professional standards, abandoning churches and synagogues for the Playboy Philosophy and lifestyle, disregarding law, basing economic life on gaming the administrative state, basing politics on conflicting identities, and much more. But much of the rest of the country followed. What would it take to make America great again—or indeed to make any of the changes that Trump’s voters demand? Replacing the current ruling class would be only the beginning.

Because it is difficult to imagine a Trump presidency even thinking about something so monumental as replacing an entire ruling elite, much less leading his constituency to accomplishing it, electing Trump is unlikely to result in a forceful turn away from the country’s current direction. Continuing pretty much on the current trajectory under the same class will further fuel revolutionary sentiments in the land all by itself. Inevitable disappointment with Trump is sure to add to them.

We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.

[Secession, secession, secession – for a proposed template of a workable Republic, buy, read, and promote, The Albany Plan Re-Visited.]

Imprimis
OVER 3,500,000 READERS MONTHLY
September 2016 • Volume 45, Number 9
In the Communist
Manifesto, Marx a
nd Engels wrote that “the history of all
hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.” Today the story of American
politics is the story of class struggles. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. We didn’t think
we were divided into different classes. Neither did Marx.
America was an exception to Marx’s theory of social progress. By that theory,
societies were supposed to move from feudalism to capitalism to communism. But the
America of the 1850s, the most capitalist society around, was not turning communist.
Marx had an explanation for that. “True enough, the classes already exist,” he wrote
of the United States, but they “are in constant f lux and ref lux, constantly changing
their elements and yielding them up to one another.” In other words, when you have
economic and social mobility, you don’t go communist.
That is the country in which some imagine we still live, Horatio Alger’s America—a
country defined by the promise that whoever you are, you have the same chance as
A PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE
The following is adapted from a speech delivered on July 11, 2016, at Hillsdale College’s
Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.,
as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.
FRA
NK BUCKL
EY
is a Foundation Professor at Scalia Law School at George Mason
University, where he has taught since 1989. Previously he was a visiting
Olin Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, and he has also
taught at McGill Law School, the Sorbonne, and Sciences Po in Paris.
He received his B.A. from McGill University and his LL.M. from
Harvard University. He is a senior editor of
The American Spectator
and the author of several books, including
The Once and Future King:
The Rise of Crown Government in America
and
The Way Back:
Restoring the Promise of America
.
Restoring America’s Economic
Mobility
Frank Buckley
A ut ho r,
The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America
2
HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERT Y SINCE 1844
anyone else to rise, with pluck, industry,
and talent. But they imagine wrong.
The U.S. today lags behind many of its
First World rivals in terms of mobility. A
class society has inserted itself within the
folds of what was once a classless country,
and a dominant New Class—as social
critic Christopher Lasch called it—has
pulled up the ladder of social advance
­
ment behind it.
One can measure these things
empirically by comparing the correlation
between the earnings of fathers and sons.
Pew’s Economic Mobility Project ranks
Britain at 0.5, which means that if a father
earns £100,000 more than the median,
his son will earn £50,000 more than the
average member of his cohort. That’s
pretty aristocratic. On the other end of
the scale, the most economically mobile
society is Denmark, with a correlation of
0.15. The U.S. is at 0.47, almost as immo
­
bile as Britain.
A complacent Republican establish
­
ment denies this change has occurred. If
they don’t get it, how
­
ever, American voters
do. For the first time,
Americans don’t
believe their children
will be as well off
as they have been.
They see an economy
that’s stalled, one
in which jobs are
moving offshore.
In the first decade
of this century, U.S.
multinationals shed
2.9 million U.S. jobs
while increasing
employment over
­
seas by 2.4 million.
General Electric
provides a strik
­
ing example. Jeffrey
Immelt became the
company’s CEO in
2001, with a mission
to advance stock
price. He did this
in part by reducing
GE’s U.S. workforce
by 34,000 jobs. During the same period,
the company added 25,000 jobs overseas.
Ironically, President Obama chose Immelt
to head his Jobs Council.
According to establishment Repub­
licans, none of this can be helped. We
are losing middle
­class jobs because of
the move to a high
­tech world that cre
­
ates jobs for a cognitive elite and destroys
them for everyone else. But that doesn’t
describe what’s happening. We are losing
middle
­class jobs, but lower
­class jobs are
expanding. Automation is changing the
way we make cars, but the rich still need
their maids and gardeners. Middle
­class
jobs are also lost as a result of regulatory
and environmental barriers, especially in
the energy sector. And the skills
­based
technological change argument is entirely
implausible: countries that beat us hands
down on mobility are just as technologi
­
cally advanced. Folks in Denmark aren’t
exactly living in the Stone Age.
This is why voters across the spectrum
began to demand radical change. What
did the Republican
elite offer in response?
At a time of maximal
crisis they have been
content with mini
­
mal goals, like Mitt
Romney’s 59­
point
plan in 2012. How
many Americans
remember even one
of those points? What
we remember instead
is Romney’s remark
about 47 percent of
Americans being tak
­
ers. That was Romney’s
way of recognizing
the class divide—and
in the election,
Americans took notice
and paid him back
with interest.
Since 2012, estab
­
lishment Republicans
have continued to be
less than concerned for
the plight of ordinary
Americans. Sure, they
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want economic growth, but it doesn’t
seem to matter into whose pockets the
money f lows. There are even the “con
­
servative” pundits who offer the pious
hope that drug
­addicted Trump sup
­
porters will hurry up and die. That’s
one way to ameliorate the class struggle,
but it doesn’t exactly endear anyone to
the establishment.
The southern writer Flannery
O’Connor once attended a dinner party
in New York given for her and liberal
intellectual Mary McCarthy. At one
point the issue of Catholicism came
up, and McCarthy offered the opinion
that the Eucharist is “just a symbol,”
albeit “a pretty one.” O’Connor, a pious
Catholic, bristled: “Well, if it’s just
a symbol, to Hell with it.” Likewise,
the principles held up as sacrosanct
by establishment Republicans might
be logically unassailable, derived like
theorems from a set of axioms based
on a pure theory of natural rights. But
if I don’t see them making people bet
­
ter off, I say to Hell with them. And
so do the voters this year. What the
establishment Republicans should ask
themselves is Anton Chigurh’s ques
­
tion in
No Country for Old Men
: If you
followed your principles, and your prin­
ciples brought you to this, what good are
your principles?
***
Had Marx been asked what would
happen to America if it ever became
economically immobile, we know what
his answer would be: Bernie Sanders
and Hillary Clinton. And also Donald
Trump. The anger expressed by the vot
­
ers in 2016—their support for candidates
from far outside the traditional political
class—has little parallel in American
history. We are accustomed to protest
movements on the Left, but the whole
­
sale repudiation of the establishment
on the Right is something new. All that
was solid has melted into air, and what
has taken its place is a kind of right
­
wing Marxism, scornful of Washington
power brokers and sneering pundits
and repelled by America’s immobile,
class
­ridden society.
Establishment Republicans came
up with the “right
­wing Marxist” label
when House Speaker John Boehner
was deposed, and labels stick when
they have the ring of truth. So it is with
the right
­wing Marxist. He is right
­
wing because he seeks to return to an
America of economic mobility. He has
seen how broken education and immi
­
gration systems, the decline of the rule
of law, and the rise of a supercharged
regulatory state serve as barriers to
economic improvement. And he is a
Marxist to the extent that he sees our
current politics as the politics of class
struggle, with an insurgent middle class
that seeks to surmount the barriers
to mobility erected by an aristocratic
New Class. In his passion, he is also
a revolutionary. He has little time for
a Republican elite that smirks at his
heroes—heroes who communicate
through their brashness and rudeness
the fact that our country is in a crisis.
To his more polite critics, the right
­wing
Marxist says: We are not so nice as you!
The right
­wing Marxist notes that
establishment Republicans who decry
crony capitalism are often surrounded
by lobbyists and funded by the Chamber
of Commerce. He is unpersuaded when
they argue that government subsidies
are needed for their friends. He does
not believe that the federal bailouts
of the 2008
­2012 TARP program and
the Federal Reserve’s zero
­interest and
quantitative easing policies were justi
­
fied. He sees that they doubled the size
of public debt over an eight
­year period,
and that our experiment in consumer
protection for billionaires took the oxy
­
gen out of the economy and produced a
jobless Wall Street recovery.
The right
­wing Marxist’s vision of
the good society is not so very differ
­
ent from that of the JFK
­era liberal; it is
a vision of a society where all have the
opportunity to rise, where people are
judged by the content of their charac
­
ter, and where class distinctions are a
thing of the past. But for the right
­wing
4
HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERT Y SINCE 1844
Marxist, the best way to reach the goal
of a good society is through free mar
­
kets, open competition, and the removal
of wasteful government barriers.
***
Readers of Umberto Eco’s
The Name
of the Rose
will have encountered the
word palimpsest, used to describe a
manuscript in which one text has been
written over another, and in which
traces of the original remain. So it is
with Canada, a country that beats the
U.S. hands down
on economic
mobility. Canada
has the reputation
of being more lib
­
eral than the U.S.,
but in reality it is
more conservative
because its liberal
policies are written
over a page of deep
conservatism.
Whereas the
U.S. comes in at
a highly immo
­
bile 0.47 on the
Pew mobility
scale, Canada is at 0.19, very close to
Denmark’s 0.15. What is further remark
­
able about Canada is that the difference
is mostly at the top and bottom of the
distribution. Between the tenth and
90th deciles there isn’t much difference
between the two countries. The differ
­
ence is in the bottom and top ten per
­
cent, where the poorest parents raise the
poorest kids and the richest parents raise
the richest kids.
For parents in the top U.S. decile,
46 percent of their kids will end up in
the top two deciles and only 2 percent
in the bottom decile. The members of
the top decile comprise a New Class
of lawyers, academics, trust
­fund
babies, and media types—a group that
wields undue inf luence in both politi
­
cal parties and dominates our culture.
These are the people who said yes,
there is an immigration crisis—but it’s
caused by our failure to give illegals a
pathway to citizenship!
There’s a top ten percent in Canada,
of course, but its children are far more
likely to descend into the middle or
lower classes. There’s also a bottom ten
percent, but its children are far more
likely to rise to the top. The country of
opportunity, the country we’ve imag
­
ined ourselves to be, isn’t dead—it
moved to Canada, a country that ranks
higher than the U.S. on measures of
economic freedom. Yes, Canada has its
much
­vaunted Medicare system, but
cross
­border dif
­
ferences in health
care don’t explain
the mobility levels.
And when you add
it all up, America
has a more gener
­
ous welfare system
than Canada or just
about anywhere
else. To explain
Canada’s higher
mobility levels,
one has to turn
to differences in
education systems,
immigration laws,
regulatory burdens, the rule of law, and
corruption—on all of which counts,
Canada is a more conservative country.
America’s K
­12 public schools per
­
form poorly, relative to the rest of the
First World. Its universities are great fun
for the kids, but many students emerge
on graduation no better educated than
when they arrived. What should be an
elevator to the upper class is stalled on
the ground f loor. One study has con
­
cluded that if American public school stu
­
dents were magically raised to Canadian
levels, the economic gain would amount
to a 20 percent annual pay increase for
the average American worker.
The U.S. has a two
­tiered educational
system: a superb set of schools and col
­
leges for the upper classes and a medio
­
cre set for everyone else. The best of
our colleges are the best anywhere, but
the average Canadian school is better
Source:
Economic Mobility Project, Pew Charitable Trusts
Economic Mobility Rankings
U.K.
United States
France
Germany
Australia
Canada
Denmark
HIGH MOBILITY
LOW MOBILITY
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
.50
.47
.41
.32
.26
.19
.15
SEPTEMBER 2016 • VOLUME 45, NUMBER 9
<
hillsdale.edu
5
than the average American one. At both
the K
­12 and college levels, Canadian
schools have adhered more closely to a
traditional, conservative set of offerings.
For K
­12, a principal reason for the dif
­
ference is the greater competition offered
in Canada, with its publicly
­supported
church
­affiliated schools. With barriers
like America’s Blaine Amendments—state
laws preventing public funding of reli
­
gious schools—lower
­class students in the
U.S. must enjoy the dubious blessing of a
public school education.
What about immigration? Canada
doesn’t have a problem with illegal
aliens—it deports them. As for the legal
intake, Canadian policies have a strong
bias towards admitting immigrants who
will confer a benefit on Canadian citi
­
zens. Even in absolute numbers, Canada
admits more immigrants under eco
­
nomic categories than the U.S., where
most legal immigrants qualify instead
under family preference categories. As
a result, on average, immigrants to the
U.S. are less educated than U.S. natives,
and unlike in Canada, second
­ and
third
­generation U.S. immigrants earn
less than their native
­born counterparts.
In short, the U.S. immigration system
imports inequality and immobility. If
immigration isn’t an issue in Canada,
that’s because it’s a system Trump
voters would love.
For those at the bottom of the social
and economic ladder who seek to rise,
nothing is more important than the rule
of law, property rights, and the sanctity
of contract provided by a mature and
efficient legal system. The alternative—in
place today in America—is a network of
elites whose personal bonds supply the
trust that is needed before deals can be
done and promises relied on. With its
more traditional
legal system, Canada
better respects the
sanctity of contract
and is less likely
to weaken prop
­
erty rights with
an American
­style
civil justice system
which at times resembles a slot machine
of judicially
­sanctioned theft. Americans
are great at talking about the rule of law,
but in reality we don’t have much stand
­
ing to do so.
Then there’s corruption. As ranked by
Transparency International’s Corruption
Perceptions Index, America is consider
­
ably more corrupt than most of the rest of
the First World. With our K Street lobby
­
ists and our donor class, we’ve spawned
the greatest concentration of money and
inf luence ever. And corruption costs. In
a regression model, the average family’s
earnings would increase from $55,000 to
$60,000 were we to ascend to Canada’s
level of non
­corruption, and to $68,000 if
we moved to Denmark’s level.
In a corrupt country, trust is a rare
commodity. That’s America today. Only
19 percent of Americans say they trust the
government most of the time, down from
73 percent in 1958 according to the Pew
Research Center. Sadly, that is a rational
response to the way things are. America
is a different country today, and a much
nastier one. For politically engaged
Republicans, the figure is six percent.
That in a nutshell explains the Trump
phenomenon and the disintegration of
the Republican establishment. If the peo
­
ple don’t trust the government, tinkering
with entitlement reform is like rearrang
­
ing deck chairs on the Titanic.
American legal institutions are consis
­
tently more liberal than those in Canada,
and they are biased towards a privileged
class of insiders who are better educated
and wealthier than the average American.
That’s why America has become an aris
­
tocracy. By contrast, Canadian legal insti
­
tutions aren’t slanted to an aristocracy.
The paradox is that Canadians employ
conservative, free market means to
achieve the liberal
end of economic
mobility. And that
points to America’s
way back: acknowl
­
edge that the prom­
ise of America has
diminished, then
emulate Canada.
■
DID YOU KNOW?
Hillsdale will launch two new free online
courses this fall: one on the Supreme Court and
one on Shakespeare. For details, and to view
archived courses, go to online.hillsdale.edu.

The Declaration of Independence: America’s Most Famous Direct-Response Ad
Gary North – July 04, 2016
Printer-Friendly Format

On this day 240 years ago, New England’s most famous independent wholesaler, John Hancock, and Congress’s stenographer, Charles Thomson, signed a parchment. We celebrate that signing annually, often by setting off low-tariff fireworks imported from China.

Most Americans know little about the background of this event. The details they recall from a high school textbook are incorrect. There is great confusion. The amount of misinformation is shocking. I am here to clear up some widely held misconceptions. (Note: I have a Ph.D in colonial American history. I have also been involved since 1974 in direct-response marketing. As far as I know, no one else has combined these two careers.)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In 1776, Hancock was well known to consumers in New England as a highly price-competitive wholesaler. His main competitor, the British East India Company, called him a smuggler. That’s what high-cost competitors who are losing market share often do. They smear the competition. This accusation went to court, but it was was not proven. His defense attorney had been John Adams.

Hancock’s competitor in 1773 had adopted a new marketing strategy. It cut prices to just below what Hancock could afford to meet. How? By persuading Parliament to cut import taxes on the company’s main item of commerce, tea. Only a small tax remained, which went to pay the salary of the governor of Massachusetts and a few officials.

Next, a group of Hancock’s associates who operated out of the Green Dragon Tavern responded by throwing the competition’s tea into Boston harbor. So, Parliament closed Boston’s harbor in 1774.

The debate grew more heated throughout 1774. British tea was now cheaper than the duty-free but illegal Dutch tea, which Hancock imported. But there was a solution: a highly successful direct-response marketing campaign run by Hancock’s long-term associate, Sam Adams. Adams had a serious marketing problem. He had to persuade people that reduced taxes and lower tea prices were a threat to liberty. This was a hard sell. But Adams was up to it. He ignored the obvious: low taxes and low prices are a good thing. Instead, he warned readers that Parliament could close every port. He also skipped over the reason why the Parliament closed the port: protesters had thrown private property into the water. In today’s money, this was over a million dollars’ worth of tea.

Beginning in 1772, Adams had begun putting together an in-house mailing list known as the Committees on Correspondence. The letters began going out. Incredibly, outraged readers began a national boycott against low-cost British tea. It another context, this would be called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I realize that this is not the way all this is described in textbooks. This is a tribute to the effectiveness of Adams’ direct-mail campaign. There is even a movement called the Tea Party that has adopted the name given to the event in the 1830’s. The Tea Party is for lower taxes.

So was Parliament in 1773.

The entry for “Boston Tea Party” on Wikipedia describes things accurately.

The North ministry’s solution was the Tea Act, which received the assent of King George on May 10, 1773. This act restored the East India Company’s full refund on the duty for importing tea into Britain, and also permitted the company, for the first time, to export tea to the colonies on its own account. This would allow the company to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen who bought the tea at wholesale auctions in London. Instead of selling to middlemen, the company now appointed colonial merchants to receive the tea on consignment; the consignees would in turn sell the tea for a commission. In July 1773, tea consignees were selected in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston.

Hancock was New England’s #1 middleman for tea. He was cut out of the deal.

The British East India Company now had a new marketing slogan. “Lower taxes. Lower prices.” (Walmart’s recently adopted slogan is similar: “Save Money. Live Better.”) Hancock had to do something, and he had to do it fast. Fortunately for Hancock, Sam Adams was up to the task.

Back in 1765, Adams had helped organize a regional sales force, the Sons of Liberty. This group had made tax collectors offers that they simply could not refuse. He had recruited Hancock into the organization. They had worked together ever since. Adams had revived the organization in 1774. It called for a boycott of tea sold by retailers for British tea. This campaign led to the first Continental Congress in September.

Adams was highly successful in politics, but in nothing else. So, honoring market responses, he specialized in politics. He had been a beer brewer, but he had gone bankrupt. (The successful beer company named Sam Adams took the name of a man who had been a complete failure as a brewer. This would be like calling a company two centuries from now “Enron Securities.” But good marketing can accomplish miracles, as I am trying to demonstrate here.)

Adams had also been a tax collector, but had failed to collect all of the required taxes. He got out of the field. This is something that he had in common with a recent immigrant from England, Thomas Paine. Earlier in the year, Paine had proven himself to be a highly skilled practitioner of direct-response marketing. His January 1776 marketing campaign was based on a classic long-copy ad with this headline: Common Sense. The campaign pulled spectacularly. It still does — a phenomenon known in the direct-response trade as “drag.” From Wikipedia:

It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history. As of 2006, it remains the all-time best selling American title, and is still in print today. . . .

The pamphlet was also highly successful because of a brilliant marketing tactic planned by Paine. He and Bell timed the first edition to be published at around the same time as a proclamation on the colonies by King George III, hoping to contrast the strong, monarchical message with the heavily anti-monarchical Common Sense. Luckily, the speech and the first advertisement of the pamphlet appeared on the same day within the pages of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.

Paine’s marketing was revolutionary. Literally.

Summary: In July 1776, Hancock was in charge of a national marketing campaign against the British East India Company. Yet the company was never mentioned. Officially, he was fighting Parliament. This was why he signed the parchment.

What was odd about the document was that it never mentioned Parliament. It only mentioned the king, who had almost no power, and who had not been involved in Parliament’s decision to cut the tax on tea. He had dutifully signed the bill when it was handed to him — a strictly formal procedure. He had remained on the sidelines until the Green Dragon boys tossed tea overboard. This attack on private property angered him. He thought it was mob violence, just as it had been a decade earlier with Adams’ Sons of Liberty. So, he closed the port of Boston when Parliament demanded this action. He sent ships to enforce this joint decision.

Hancock had great name identification, so he wrote his signature large enough to be eye-catching, but not so large as to generate envy among his associates — he hoped. He wanted to head off murmuring: “Pretty fancy signature for a smuggler.”

He need not have worried. His peers did not want to put their John Hancocks on the document — not yet, anyway.

THE MARKETING CAMPAIGN

The ad is a classic example of what is known as “reasons why” advertising. It was filled with reasons why it was time to create an independent franchise operation. It targeted the king.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

And so on. It was a long list. It lacked only bullet points. But by July 4, 1776, it did not lack bullets.

The ad had an inauspicious headline:

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776, A DECLARATION By the REPRESENTATIVES of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS assembled

This was not the stuff of high-response-rate advertising. The headline accounts for about 80% of an ad’s effectiveness. A good headline promises benefits. The copy did not get to the benefits until the second paragraph: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. These are good, of course, but they are general. A good ad needs specific benefits. The other two benefits were also overly general: Safety and Happiness. Still, this was better: not just the pursuit of happiness, but actual happiness. “Pursuit” is too vague.

Nevertheless, this document turned out to be the most important direct-response ad in American history. Had it not been effective, the two signers would be known in textbooks on British history as agents of a failed marketing campaign that led to a legendary bankruptcy. The two signers fully understood this at the time.

Discretion is the better part of valor. There were about 54 other men who approved of the document, but who chose not to sign it on July 4.

There was a good reason for this. In direct-response advertising, you had better do a test mailing. Only after the preliminary results are in do you do a full roll-out. If you violate this rule, the response could, as experienced copywriters like to say, get you killed.

The assembled co-signers fully understood the risks of a poor response to the mailing. So, they held off signing. They told the two signers: “You go first.”

About 200 copies of the ad were sent out the next day. John Dunlop printed them. They were printed as posters, called broadsides. You can see the broadside here. They went to state legislatures around the country. The mail was slow in those days — much slower than snail mail is today. So, they waited.

The initial response was favorable. So, on August 2, the participants took a vote:

Resolved That the Declaration passed on the 4th be fairly engrossed on parchment with the title and stile of “The unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America” & that the same when engrossed be signed by every member of Congress.

The resolution passed. So, they signed their names. Anyway, most of them did. Not all. These did not: John Alsop, George Clinton, John Dickinson, Charles Humphreys, Robert R. Livingston, John Rogers, Thomas Willing, and Henry Wisner. But they were offset by men who had not been involved in planning the details of the national marketing operation, but who had come onto the Board of Directors after July 4. They had been involved regionally: Matthew Thornton, William Williams, Benjamin Rush, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, George Ross, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton.

The entry for August 2 reads: “The declaration of Independence being engrossed & compared at the table was signed by the Members.” This new name, “declaration of independence,” had a better ring to it than the original. They hoped that this would increase the response rate.

Even so, a record of the vote was kept only in a second set of minutes. Charles Thomson, who died in 1824, decided not reveal the existence of these secret minutes for over 40 years. A man can’t be too careful. They were released in 1821.

As I said, these were men of discretion. They were still not ready to do a large mailing. They also wanted to have a receptive audience. The market in August was poor, as is typical for direct-response mailings. The previous winter, the company had done a test marketing program in Canada, which had failed. The survivors had retreated to New York by June. The group had been led by one of the promising sales directors, Benedict Arnold. Nevertheless, the company still had high hopes for him. He looked like a comer.

The next test came soon: on August 27. The results almost produced bankruptcy. The Director of Marketing, G. Washington, had organized a trial run, and after the trial, he and his associates ran. Actually, they sailed under cover of darkness and a seasonally rare fog. They left Long Island hurriedly.

So, they waited.

On December 26, the most successful post-Christmas sale in American history took place in Trenton, New Jersey. Washington and his associates presented a group of 1500 Hessian tourists with an offer they did not refuse.

On January 18, corporate headquarters sent out printed copies of the signed document to the state capitals for local distribution. This handout did quite well.

BURIAL AND RESURRECTION

As with all direct-mail campaigns, response rates fell off rapidly because of repeated mailings. The document went into obscurity by late 1777. But some recipients kept copies of it in their files. In direct-response marketing, these are called swipe files. This term was certainly appropriate for the most famous swipe in the history of Great Britain. A wholly owned subsidiary went independent. It refused to honor the implicit and universally recognized non-compete clauses in the original 13 regional by-laws.

Then, in 1800, the old document was revived. There was a split in the leadership of the new firm. Two of the original signers were competing for CEO. One of them, John Adams, had been on the committee of five that had drafted the original document. He was competing against Thomas Jefferson, who had been assigned the task of writing the first draft. Jefferson’s supporters were claiming that their man had done most of the writing.

Adams faced the grim task of anyone who resorts to a “me, too” marketing campaign. The product that gets into the market first has a huge advantage, called the unique selling proposition, or USP. Jefferson had gotten there first. His supporters made this clear.

Adams was having a tough time in 1800. A few weeks before the election, one of the members of his faction, Alexander Hamilton, had distributed a long letter calling Adams’s character into question. It was too late to respond. Adams’ supporters could only grumble, “that bastard!” It did no good.

Jefferson won. And from that day on, he attributed much of his career success to his authorship of the first draft of the original direct-response ad. As he put on his tombstone:

Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia

But I still think he could have come up with a better headline than “In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776, A DECLARATION By the REPRESENTATIVES of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS assembled.”

[For my detailed study of the Declaration of Independence, go here.]
Printer-Friendly Format

Secession!

How else can you interpret this?

Read the secession argument again.

Petraeus was forced to plead guilty in order to not go to jail. The classified material in his possession was not subject to the hacking that Hillary’s was.

Over 40 people are now in jail for LESS than what Comey says Hillary did.

Secession.

Support For Flag Day 2016 and Respects for Americans Murdered in Orlando
Joseph R. John
To
jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Jun 15 at 2:12 AM
Support For Flag Day 2016 and Respect for Americans Murdered in Orlando

By Capt Joseph R. John, June 14, 2016

The below listed message from Rees Lloyd, Esq (USA) Honors Flag Day. On this Flag Day, it is appropriate to pay homage to the 49 innocent and gentle Americans who were murdered, and 50 others innocent Americans who were wounded in Orlando in the 86th terrorists attack on American soil by another Radical Islamic Terrorists.

Unfortunately, few Americans are aware that Radical Islamic Terrorists have been attacking and/or killing hundreds of Americans citizens on US soil for the last 8 years; those attacks have been covered up by the left of center liberal media establishment, and the threat continues to be minimized and underestimated by the occupant of the Oval Office.

The United States has been under attack from coast to coast in places like Sacramento, Houston, Philadelphia, San Bernardino, Times Square, Moore, Detroit, Boise, Little Rock, Fort Hood Texas, Portland-ME, Chattanooga, Garland, Boston, Portland-OR, Minneapolis, Merced, Missouri, Kentucky, New York, Illinois, Washington-DC, Orlando, Oklahoma, and many more cities too numerous to list here.

The FBI has over 1000 open cases on Radical Islamic Terrorists planning attacks against Americans on US soil. To date 100 ISIS Radical Islamic Terrorist plots have been broken up by the FBI, resulting in the arrests of over 180 ISIS Muslim Refugees and Radical Islamic Terrorists from across the United States

We are saddened at the loss of any American lives to murderous attacks by Radical Islamic Terrorists who have “Declared War Against the United States”, and those terrorists have been employing bombs, knives, planes, and guns in 86 Terrorist Attacks to kill Americans on US soil.

We encourage very aggressive action by the US Armed Forces against Radical Islamic Terrorist, ISIS, Al Q’ieda in their overseas bases of operations to put them on the defensive and eradicate the terrorist threat. The best defense is a good offenses.

We also encourage the Obama administration to allow the FBI to interview all entering Middle East and African Refugees to determine if they have terrorist ties, before they are allowed to be resettled in 180 cities across the United States; to date Obama has allowed 915,000 Middle East and African Refugees to be resettled in the United States without allowing the FBI to vet their backgrounds to determine if they have terrorist ties.

We observe Flag Day again this year, and under the Flag of the United States, pay our respects to every American killed by Radical Islamic Terrorists as a result of their “Declared War Against the United States”.

Copyright 2016, Capt. Joseph R. John. All Rights Reserved. This material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author. It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without permission from the author
Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62
Capt USN(Ret)/Formere FBI
Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC
2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184
San Diego, CA 92108

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

https://www.facebook.com/combatveteransforcongress?ref=hl

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8
FLAG DAY 2016: Author William J. Federer’s history of Flag Day on http://www.AmericanMinute.com
Comrades, Colleagues, and Patriots:

It’s Flag Day 2016. Long may it wave, over what once was the “land of the free, and the home of the brave,” and will be again if we Americans are brave enough to restore it and thereby keep it free.

The Flag is the symbol of what was and is the first nation born as a constitutional republic established with the consent of the governed; the first nation in the history of the world of, by, and for “We, the People.”

In honoring the Flag we honor and remember the service and sacrifice of the some 1.4-million American veterans who have given their lives in defense of freedom from the War of Independence in 1776 through all the wars to the War Against Terrorism today. When we dishonor the Flag, we dishonor each and all of them, without whose sacrifice we would not be free.

On this Flag Day, I forward, with thanks to patriotic author William J. Federer, his http://www.AmericanMinute.com on the history of Flag Day. May God bless all who have served under the Flag, all who are serving, and all who will serve, and all patriots who remain brave enough to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” in order to preserve our American freedom.

FOR GOD AND COUNTRY FOREVER; SURRENDER TO TYRANNY–NEVER!

American Minute with Bill Federer
FLAG DAY “Millions of our school children will daily proclaim…dedication of our nation…to the Almighty” -Eisenhower

Thirteen Stars and Thirteen Stripes.

On JUNE 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress selected the FLAG of the United States.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson designated JUNE 14 as “NATIONAL FLAG DAY.”

“I… call your attention to the approach of the anniversary of the day upon which THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES was adopted by the Congress as the emblem of the Union…

…I therefore… request that throughout the nation… the FOURTEENTH DAY of JUNE be observed as FLAG DAY with special patriotic exercises… to give significant expressions to our thoughtful love of America, our comprehension of the great mission of liberty and justice… for an America which no man can corrupt, no influence draw away from its ideals, no force divide against itself…

Done at the City of Washington…in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixteen.”

On JUNE 14, 1783, General George Washington sent a “Circular Letter” to the thirteen Governors of the newly independent States:

“I am now preparing to resign…

Before I carry this resolution into effect, I think it a duty…to make this my last official communication, to congratulate you on the glorious events which Heaven has been pleased to produce in our favor…

The Citizens of America are from this period to be considered as the actors of a most conspicuous theater, which seems to be particularly designed by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity…

Heaven has crowned all its other blessing, by giving a fairer opportunity for political happiness, than any other nation has ever been favored with…”

For God and Country

Washington continued, warning:

“According to the system of policy the States shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall;

and by their confirmation or lapse, it is yet to be decided, whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse…

not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved…”

Washington’s concern for “unborn millions” was indicative of the founders, who sacrificed their prosperity for their posterity.

This contrasted with later politicians who sacrificed their posterity for their prosperity, yoking children with an unpayable debt.

John Adams wrote, April 26, 1777:

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

Washington concluded:

“I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in His holy protection;

that He would incline the hearts of the citizens…to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another… and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field;

and finally, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion,

and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.”

Speaking of the Flag, President Calvin Coolidge stated May 31, 1926:

“Our condition today is not merely that of one people UNDER ONE FLAG, but of a thoroughly united people who have seen bitterness and enmity which once threatened to sever them pass away, and a spirit of kindness and good will reign over them all.”

President Calvin Coolidge stated May 25, 1924, at the Confederate Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia:

“It is the maintenance of our American ideals, BENEATH A COMMON FLAG, under the blessings of Almighty God… We know that Providence would have it so.”

For God and Country

President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated November 13, 1935:

“OUR FLAG for a century and a half has been the symbol of the principles of liberty of conscience, of religious freedom and equality before the law; and these concepts are deeply ingrained in our national character.”

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated on FLAG DAY, JUNE 14, 1942:

“The belief in man, created free, in the image of God – is the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face today…

…We ask the German people, still dominated by their Nazi whip-masters, whether they would rather have the mechanized hell of Hitler’s ‘New’ Order or – in place of that, freedom of speech and religion…

…We ask the Japanese people, trampled by their savage lords of slaughter, whether they would rather continue slavery and blood or – in place of them, freedom of speech and religion…

…We know that man, born to freedom in the image of God, will not forever suffer the oppressors’ sword…”

Franklin Roosevelt continued:

“I am going to close by reading you a prayer…

‘God of the free, we pledge our hearts and lives today to the cause of all free mankind.

Grant us victory over the tyrants who would enslave all free men and Nations…

Grant us patience with the deluded and pity for the betrayed…

Grant us… valor that shall cleanse the world of oppression and the old base doctrine that the strong must eat the weak because they are strong.'”

Mentioning the Flag, Yale President Ezra Stiles warned May 8, 1783:

“That symbol of union, THE AMERICAN FLAG with it increasing stripes and stars, may have an equally combining efficacy for ages…

…The senatorial constitution and consulate of the Roman Empire lasted from Tarquin (last Roman king, 509 BC) to Caesar (Roman dictator, 49 BC)…

…The Assyrian endured without mutation through a tract of one thousand three hundred years from Semiramis (legendary ancient Babylonian queen) to Sardanapalus (alleged last Assyrian ruler, 627 BC)…

…Nor was the policy of Egypt overthrown for a longer period from the days of Metzraim (upper and lower Nile kingdoms, c.3,300 BC)

till the time of Cambyses (Persian conqueror of Egypt, 525 BC) and Amasis (last great Egpytian ruler, 526 BC)…

…The Medo-Persian (550-330 BC) and Alexandrine Empires (356-323 BC), and that of Timur (1370-1405 AD), who once reigned from Smyrna to the Indus, were…of short and transitory duration…

…Pragmatic sanction…secured the imperial succession in the House of Austria for ages (Habsburgs, 1020-1780)…

Whatever mutations may arise in the United States, perhaps hereditary monarchy and a standing army will be the last.”

Ben Franklin warned June 2, 1787:

“There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh – get first all the people’s money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever…

There is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government… I am apprehensive…that the government of the States may, in future times, end in a monarchy.”

Yale President Ezra Stiles continued:

“This great American revolution, this recent political phenomenon… will be… contemplated by all nations….

…Navigation will carry THE AMERICAN FLAG around the globe itself; and display the thirteen stripes and new constellation at Bengal and Canton, on the Indus and Ganges, on the Whang-ho and the Yang-tse-kiang; and with commerce will import the wisdom and literature of the east….

…That prophecy of Daniel is now literally fulfilling – there shall be a universal traveling to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

…This knowledge will be brought home and treasured up in America: and being here digested and carried to the highest perfection, may re-blaze back from America to Europe, Asia and Africa, and illumine the world with truth and liberty…”

America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations

Ezra Stiles added:

“John Adams…observes… ‘But the great designs of Providence must be accomplished… The progress of society will be accelerated by centuries by this revolution…

…American ideas of toleration and religious liberty…will become the fashionable system of Europe very soon. Light spreads from the dayspring in the west; and may it shine more and more until the perfect day…'”

Stiles concluded:

“The United States will embosom all the religious sects or denominations in Christendom…

The Presbyterian, the Church of England… the Unitas Fratrum… Moravian bishops… Ancient Bohemian churches… the Baptists, the Friends, the Lutherans, the Romanists… the Dutch, and Gallic, and German reformed or Calvinistic churches… There is a Greek church brought from Smyrna… There are Wesyans, Mennonites… all…who will give the religious complexion to America… Episcopal… Greek and Armenian patriarchates…

With a most generous benevolence….of a friendly cohabitation of all sects in America, proving that men may be good members of civil society, and yet differ in religion…

Little would civilians have thought ages ago, that the world should ever look to America for models of government.”

President James Buchanan stated March 4, 1857:

“We ought to cultivate peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations…in a spirit of Christian benevolence toward our fellow-men… The people, under the protection of THE AMERICAN FLAG, have enjoyed civil and religious liberty..”

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commented to State Senator James Scovel of New Jersey:

“If God gives me four years more to rule this country, I believe it will become what it ought to be – what its Divine Author intended it to be – no longer one vast plantation for breeding human beings for the purpose of lust and bondage.

But it will become a new Valley of Jehoshaphat, where all the nations of the earth will assemble together UNDER ONE FLAG, worshiping a common God, and they will celebrate the resurrection of human freedom.”

When Abraham Lincoln died, President Andrew Johnson stated April 25, 1865:

“In order to mitigate that grief on earth which can only be assuaged by communion with the Father in heaven…

I… appoint… the 25th day of May next, to be observed, wherever in the United States THE FLAG OF THE COUNTRY may be respected, as a day of humiliation and mourning, and I recommend… citizens… assemble in their respective places of worship, there to unite in solemn service to Almighty God.”

President Rutherford B. Hayes noted in his diary that during the Civil War:

“Archbishop John Baptist Purcell strung THE AMERICAN FLAG, in the crisis of our fate, from the top of the Cathedral in Cincinnati April 16, 1861! The spire was beautiful before, but the Catholic prelate made it radiant with hope and glory for our country!”

America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations

When Rutherford B. Hayes died, President Benjamin Harrison described him, January 18, 1893:

“He was a patriotic citizen, a lover of THE FLAG and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home.”

President Andrew Johnson stated while serving as a Senator from Tennessee (The Life and Public Services of Andrew Johnson – State Papers, Speeches and Addresses, by John Savage, NY: Derby & Miller, 1866, p. 247, appendix p. 87, Jan. 31, 1862):

“Let us look forward to the time when we can take THE FLAG OF OUR COUNTRY and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribe for our motto: ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,’ and exclaim, ‘Christ first, our country next!'”

In dedicating the Oregon Trail, President Warren G. Harding stated July 3, 1923:

“Never in the history of the world has there been a finer example of civilization following Christianity.

The missionaries led under the banner of the Cross, and the settlers moved close behind under the STAR-SPANGLED SYMBOL OF THE NATION.”

President Benjamin Harrison stated July 21, 1892

“Let THE NATIONAL FLAG float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship… Let there be expressions of gratitude to Divine Providence.”

On FLAG DAY, JUNE 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed Public Law 396 adding the phrase “One Nation Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance:

“Sec. 7. The following is designated as the Pledge of Allegiance to THE FLAG: ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’

Such pledge should be rendered by standing with the right hand over the heart. However, civilians will always show full respect to the flag when the pledge is given by merely standing at attention, men removing the headdress. Persons in uniform shall render the military salute.”

President Eisenhower stood on the steps of the Capitol Building and recited the revised Pledge of Allegiance for the first time.

The Pledge of Allegiance was first written in 1892 by a Baptist minister from Boston named Francis Bellamy, who was ordained in the Baptist Church of Little Falls, New York.

Francis Bellamy was a member of the staff of The Youth’s Companion, which first published the Pledge on September 8, 1892, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Public-school children first recited it during the National School Celebration on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America, October 12, 1892, at the dedication of the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair.

The words “under God” were taken from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

“…that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

In 1979, a publication approved by and printed under authority of Congress titled “The Capitol-A Pictorial History of the Capitol and of the Congress” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 24, commented regarding the Pledge:

“This Pledge attests what has been true about America from the beginning. Faith in the transcendent, sovereign God was in the public philosophy-the American consensus. America’s story opened with the first words of the Bible, In the beginning God…

…We are truthfully one nation under God ‘and our institutions presuppose a Divine Being,’ wrote Justice William O. Douglas in 1966…

…Only a nation founded on theistic presupposition would adopt a first amendment to ensure the free exercise of all religions or of none.

…The government would be neutral among the many denominations and no one church would become the state church. But America and its institutions of government could not be neutral about God.”

The pledge is “to the Flag and to the Republic for which it stands.”

A “republic” is where the people are king, ruling through their public servants called representatives.

When people pledge allegiance to the Flag, they are saying that they are the king, not some usurping dictator.

When someone dishonors the flag they are saying they do not want to be king anymore, that they want to relinquish responsibility for their lives to someone else.

They are rejecting equality before the law, freedom of speech, conscience, religion; and inalienable rights from the Creator.

President Eisenhower stated on JUNE 14, 1954:

“From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.

To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than…this re-dedication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country’s true meaning.”

President Eisenhower ended:

“In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.”

Get the book For God and Country

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