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Towards a Restoration Workers’ Return
This is my first Member Post, and it started as a quick comment. I soon realized it was getting at something I have wanted to explore a tad deeper, so I have brought it here for your reading pleasure. Thoughts and feedback are highly appreciated. Thank you Ricochet, and thank you dear reader.
Near the end of the most recent Law Talk with Richard Epstein and John Yoo, (#145 The Housewarming Party), Prof. Yoo discussed a recent dissent by Judge Laurence Silberman. Yoo spoke to the change in Silberman’s rulings/philosophy and GOP/Conservatism as one that has become more “populist, anti-institution.” I couldn’t agree more – though perhaps not for the reasons that the culinary savant Yoo may think.
Prof. Epstein makes a good retort that it is because they (the institutions) have “behaved badly.” This explains the changed stance toward corporations and institutions that GOP/Conservative coalitions are going through at the moment. This “populism” is best understood as, “the general public’s movement towards political and institutional changes because of dismay with their elite.”
Populism defined as a du jour movement paints too broadly and fails to highlight the reason for the change.
Epstein lists several examples of “behaving badly” and also points out that the Left is also experiencing its own populist movement. The difference lies in which direction the changes are going and how the parties themselves are changing.
The Left is finding itself further captured by internal forces that are in thrall of a system-leveling, utopian march that has been growing for the better part of the last century. Whereas the Right, once champions of the very cultural and political institutions that were (often properly) viewed as the bedrock of this American society, has seen a dramatically accelerating shift in the direction of these institutions. Not at all led by social/political bottom-up change through slow integration and understanding as is desired by the Right, but rather through direct top-down realignment by those who should rightfully be referred to as the Elite.
The Elite are turning the corporate behemoths in this country into something more akin to Mussolini’s National Council of Corporations; those Elites in the political institutions are bringing about the new Red Scare in their continual Blue-Anon conspiracies; those Elites in the cultural and literary circles raising up new Cathedrals and Pravdas – complete with their own ever-expanding lists of sin from which the only repose is acceptance and conformity. Not a glimmer of benevolence or conversational dignity is to be found.
It is against this Elite that Yoo’s former judge-boss is turning. I applaud those complaining that the mortar of our American foundation that should be repaired and renewed is instead being dismantled. The stones not just chipped away at but rather unceremoniously carried off and casually discarded. The structure will not stand without a solid foundation (perhaps the goal for some), and thankfully it seems (according to polling/social science study) that the general masses are none-too-pleased to see Demolition Crews arriving on the sites of their own communities. The people are asking in their pluralistic ways (both Left, Center, and Right – but really driving many into the Realigning Right – more on that another time) for the return of Restoration Workers.
When faced with a corrupt and captured Elite, the only proper answer for the people is to take a stir at the Populist pot and distill from that stew the hopeful cure. This hopefully fragrant Balm of Gilead will inspire, reinvigorate, motivate, and awaken that American spirit in those who will lead our future institutions, and in due course, reconstitute a proper elite focused on building and beauty as opposed to iconoclasm and destruction.
Published in General
This immediately called my attention to public education and its historical connection to the emergence of unions. Both are products of cultural needs of the industrial period, the discipline of scheduling developed in public education benefitting the capitalists and the unions benefitting the workers. These institutions are now corrupted.
Indeed. Institutions need to do more than just Exist. Many people still refer to the New York Times as An Institution, as if it doesn’t matter when An Institution deceives and outright lies.
If – just as an ultra-hypothetical – the Catholic Church were to degenerate to the point where it’s basically NAMBLA, what would be the value of continuing to venerate it as An Institution?
Great post. Thank you. :-)
I’m taking my lead from President Trump. He is trying to fix the existing Republican Party as the most viable way forward in our country. I agree with him and admire him for being so clear headed.
America’s public educational institutions unfortunately aren’t just existing, they are instruments used to deconstruct the family and thereby our Republic so they must be reconstituted and appropriately directed.
That’s why OUR Populism is good because it wants to do that, while THEIR Populism is bad because it doesn’t.
And especially where that edifice is concerned, it is not clear we wouldn’t be better off if it did just outright fail.
Woah. I should be wearing my nice shoes. :)
And pants. :-)
That’s not in the CoC.
no metric system?
Chesterton also wrote: The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. (Illustrated London News, 1924)
Was Reagan a populist? Didn’t he use the slogan “make America great again” in 1980? Or maybe I’m confusing it with 1984, it’s morning again in America
Ok, now I’m rather star-struck… I should be eating something special – a response from Prof. Yoo?!? But alas – Lent has pushed the Bojangles Fish Sandwich option aside. Although we will be making our first country ham simmered in Dr. Pepper (can’t beat prune juice soda!), and that will more than suffice with some biscuits and good butter.
Thank you for the response Professor, and I wholeheartedly agree with your point that institutions take a good amount of time to be built up. The point being pressed was to push back at your fears that the current populist mood on the right was in the direction of tearing down that famous “Fence”, and rather encourage one to see this developing populist movement as one whose end goal will likely be that of restoration/reconstruction of institution and Elite alike.
If you map back through the Tea-Party, to its early roots (I think of the Federalist Society, the foundation of YAF, etc. as starts of the long journey to the present moment) and view the current populist movement as a broadening set of desires that are being worked through our diverse federalist system, worked by the invisible hands of hundreds of state-level GOP elites, think-tankers, passionate individual actors, all guided by millions of little Patrick Swayze GOP citizen hands through their loving feedback and participation – that THIS populist movement will eventually take a more agreed-upon shape before being fired in the kiln into a coherent tool to approach a national, state, and local reconstruction and restoration of institution and Elite alike.
Perhaps you think my illustration is a bit dramatic (ok – I added the ‘Swayze for YOU Professor – got to keep the attention of the class, amiright?), but for a movement to grow through the institutions to counter the Progressive/Post-Modernist movement it has to equally develop over time to swing that pendulum back from deconstruction and “tearing down” of the Fence to the understanding of the reason for the Fence, and its reconstruction.
I say this moment of populism is being exemplified by your mentor Judge’s dissent (among the many others actions we are witnessing almost daily now) and is developing from an inspired polis, one that more clearly sees the decay in the mortar of the institutions they love and need, and this polis sees more clearly the demolition crews manning the Elite seats of power across the land.
So professor, it needs the ‘Swayze to create this with Demi Moore – the invisible hands of the spontaneous order of federalism, faith, and freedom creating with the corporal powers of our wise elites – you are among those elites! Not the fecund Elite mentioned above, but of our long march – You Prof. Yoo… you must be one of the Demi Moores.
Buried in there is my point. Comical, symbolically – but quite seriously – this is not a movement to tear down, but to restore.
Great example! I have been kicking around another piece on Unions that focuses on the Wagner Act and subsequent court rulings that have actually limited, centralized, and ruined the institution of the Union – an expression of free association that became anything but.
Even though many heads explode from the entrance of El Naranja, he inspired a great many to stand up and not just stand athwart the path of the Juggernaut saying, “Stop!” But to roll up their sleeve and push back and topple the Gollum off its clay feet. It may not appear to be so, but the passion, growth, and dedication of this movement is thunderously growing.
(I participate in local politics/County GOP groups, etc. the growth and continued participation is JUST CRAZY right now – like five times what happened during the Tea Party, and half of these newcomers are not traditional GOP!)
Such a great quote to add to this thread. Thank you. I NEED to get more Chesterton under my nose.
It’s like the Glorious Revolution, a preserving revolution in the words of Edmund Burke
public sector unions should be illegal, hell even FDR thought public sector unions were a bad idea
Davis Bacon Act should be revoked
But I LOVE bacon!
Cool fact. The meter is based on the length of a Specific metal bar in a museum or lab.
It was thought to be a stable metric, but apparently through one of the change states of elements, it has been shrinking. Not by much, but over a long period of time, even the meter will be shorter in the future than it is now.
Certainly. Those are translations. I have seen numbers between 173 and 175 centimeters for Hitler. For Napoleon, between 168 and 170.
I thought it was re-standardized as X number of wavelengths of a certain kind of light?
The metre is currently defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second.
But that still depends on the definition of a length of a second. Sloppy.
Of course “it’s all relative,” as they say. It’s a similar problem if you define it as being X waves of light of a certain “color” (they aren’t all the same) because “color” is determined by another arbitrary scale, or even more than one…
The second is defined as being equal to the time duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the fundamental unperturbed ground-state of the caesium-133 atom.
Okay, now we’ve got something! :-)
A standard reference manual for physics and chemistry will have all of these definitions.
It’s been decades since I had occasion or need to consult one.
I only knew about the metal thing because when my son was learning about state changes last year, I was trying to figure out the difference between water evaporation/vaporization and steam. I didn’t know all substances could “evaporate”.