We hold these truths to be self evident...

A major worldview win

Abraham Lincoln used to tell the story from his circuit riding days of an older woman on trial for killing her husband. After listening to a few hours of testimony that spoke to the cruelty of the husband, the trial judge declared a recess and called the defendant into his chambers where he said,

That window over there is stuck open and I can’t figure out how to close it. I will be back in a moment.

And then he stepped out of the room for 15 minutes. Justice was done as the self-made widow crawled out of the window to freedom.

When the Civil War was over, Confederate president Jefferson Davis made a break for Florida and an offshore destination. Davis could have been apprehended by the Union army, but Lincoln knew that to do so would inflame the Southern population. He told them to let Mr. Davis flee the country.

Following the election of Donald Trump there are calls for the president-elect to pardon Hunter Biden as a means of reconciling the country. I agree with this approach to reconciliation, but only in the context of the justice outlined by these Lincoln stories.

There is a fundamental rule that animates the US constitution, and that is that no one is above the law. Over the past four years this phrase has been grossly over-used in an illegitimate context but, for all that, it remains true. Hunter Biden and all other lawbreakers should face justice for what they have done. But maybe sufficient justice is to “crawl out of the window” and live one’s life outside the United States - Ukraine perhaps. Sometimes there needs to be a reconciliatory redemption that balances realpolitik with the visceral need for compensation.

I have two daughters who follow every honeyed word of a substack writer called Holly Mathnerd and recently I was forwarded a very thought provoking entry from her. She quotes an author who is angry at what the Boomer presidents have done to the United States and particularly to GenX residents of the United States. In this argument, GenXer’s lives have been forfeit to the extravagances in war and finance of a Boomer elite who have profited handsomely from the suffering of the next generations.

I am a Boomer and I agree with almost everything the author says. 

In the aftermath of the Trump re-election, now is the time for substacks like Holly Mathnerd.  Shooting with birdshot in this way is cathartic and there is a need for that catharsis. In words reminiscent of my days working in underground mines, the writer offers a written middle finger to those who have authored so much pain and destruction. 

However, beyond the catharsis, Ms. Mathnerd’s substack doesn’t address the problem directly enough.  I don’t think anyone has addressed these problems directly enough so… sigh… I guess I will have to.

The practical solutions to the American malaise being offered by Trump and his MAGA posse are, for the most part, the right ones in my view but no one is talking about the root cause necessitating these solutions.

In the great political liberation of the Spanish colonies in the 1820s, every new Latin American country that emerged from the destruction of Spanish control became a republic with a constitution virtually identical to the US constitution of 1787.  Those new Latin countries changed their constitutions a hundred times since their emancipation from Spain.  The US, apart from a Bill of Rights and specific amendments, has never changed its constitution.  The US has a GDP that is multiples of those Latin republics.  Why?  Clearly there is nothing magic about the US constitution - it didn't help the Latin republics (Incidentally, read the constitution of the USSR.  It will shock you by how close it was to the US constitution).  So why did the US do so well with a constitution that didn't help Latin America at all? Not surprisingly, I think it is a worldview issue.

The issue that is being missed, although it hovers in the background, is that the Millenials and GenXers were the first American generations to trash the constitution by ignoring it.  And they ignored it because it was not properly taught to them.  No one taught them Civics to inculcate the profoundly creative worldview of the Declaration of Independence and no one tied that worldview to its logical political conclusion - the US constitution.   

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence says, in part,

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Latin American freedom fighters like Bolivar and San Martin missed the linkage between the Declaration of Independence and the constitution.  They didn’t recognize that the living spirit of the constitution lies in the Declaration and, by missing this, they adopted a dead document.

And because no one is saying this, I will.  Two people who above all understood this disconnect between the Declaration and the constitution were Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon.  Writers like Mark Levin, acting as Paul Revere, properly raised the alarm and his (and others) contributions were important.   However, Breitbart and Bannon started organizing in 2008 to reverse the danger of this disconnect following the financial collapse.  They exposed the big grift of bank refinancing from the public purse and the maintenance of impossibly low interest rates. It has taken until this latest election for the correction to be applied. Even so the job is only half complete.

Who suffered from the wreckage of 2008?  Middle class people who lost their homes and whose taxes were used to save the financial institutions.  Who profited from 2008?  The people who caused the collapse.  It is now known as “institutionalizing the downside”. When gains are made, I keep the gain. When losses are incurred I pass them on to the taxpayers. Why was this allowed to happen?  Because among those who understood this abrogation of the constitution, there wasn't enough energy to push back.  The middle class Boomers and others who lost in 2008 didn't have the support of the younger generations - because they had neglected to teach them basic civics.

Donald Trump promises to change the federal government by chaining it back to the constitution and, through the constitution, to the Declaration.  In my view, this will unleash the animal spirits of the US economy, and in a few decades the debt will be a thing of the past. 

If my assertion that freedom results in creativity is correct, then returning US governance to the constitution and the worldview that underlies it will only generate good things.  Phrases like, "we the people”, “hold these truths to be self evident", "are endowed by their Creator", “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are spiritual in nature and when they are taken seriously, the resulting freedom unleashes the good things.

Two things, above all, need to happen to buttress US (and Canadian) governance;

1. There needs to be a return to mandatory civics education by clearing out, root and branch, the Marxism that has crept in over the past several decades and replacing it with instruction about how the Great Awakening informed the founding documents that energized the US revolutionary war and the British North America Act. Students need to be taught that the Anglophone nations of North America were informed by religious rather than Enlightenment principles.

2. There needs to be a reckoning for the deviations from the founding documents over the past 25 years.  The lack of a reckoning over the financial collapse of 2008 was profoundly dispiriting to the middle classes.  "Cheaters and criminals win" was the message.  And it is not just the travesty of the financial collapse. For example, those who brought us the covid over reach through lies and self-dealing must also be brought to justice.  It is bad enough to suffer for the unfounded authoritarianism of others.  It is damaging when those others get away with it.  Justice, to be justice, must be seen to be done.  If not, it only breeds contempt and cynicism.

Can a one year course in civics result in such widespread goodness? It seems too simple and too good to be true. I believe that it is indeed simple and very good. I also believe that a similar inculcating of this worldview in any other country will yield the same result. The United States is not “singularly blessed by God”. It simply follows the worldview that God has taught to us,

“Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

Life: meaning that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. It is a promise made millennia ago and only the Americans have had the temerity to act on it. Good for them!

Now what becomes of those on the political left who had the audacity to untether the governance of their nation from its constitution and Declaration? My guess is that they will wander the wilderness for some time. It may not be forty years but it will be more than ten. The finger pointing, the disbelief that wokeism doesn’t work, that socialism is not the route to Utopia, that ends really don’t justify means… This will take some time to work through the system. Perhaps a new generation of people on the left will have to be present before new life appears in the Democrat Party.

We will recognize that new life on the left when they are funny again. Unfortunately, they traded their sense of humour for a grasp at a nonexistent brass ring that turned out to be a mess of potage. I hope that I am wrong about the timing because corruption always creeps in when there is a vacuum of competition and I am sick of the corruption.

Ironically, people from the left need to hone their positions by arguing them with people from the right just as people on the right need to hone their positions by arguing them with those on the left. And due to this mutual need we might as well have some humour to smooth the rough spots. Ignoring each other makes no sense.

But it will take some time.