Thomas Jefferson on Judicial Tyranny 🧵 “Nothing in the Constitution has given them [the federal judges] a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. . . . The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” (Letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804)

I regret to inform you that the activist journos are at it again. Herein, Phil (who has trouble remembering how to spell my last name) pretends to bring “receipts” to the table, but all he ends up doing is vindicating those who understand that legacy media is in a state of serious embarrassment. 🧵 Let me not bury the lead here: basically, Phil thought it was a good idea to come to a small town where I have been living peaceably for the last five months, bring out helicopters and camera crews and convince everybody that I am part of a Nazi-adjacent conspiracy. Seriously. Like Gaston whipping up the village into a frenzy he associated us with images like this:

You were told that removing a few statues wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t about liquidating a heritage, memory holing the collective experience of a people, humiliating a culture. It was a peace offering in a changing world.

They were lying. They are seeking erasure: Birmingham statue of Charles Linn (taken down May 31, 2020) thehill.com/changing-ameri…

One of the things I've come under fire for lately is some critical remarks about the socio-political character of the overall South Asian (Indian in particular) community in America. This is actually a topic that comes up a lot--informally--on the grassroots Right; because anecdotally, there seems to be considerable differences culturally between them as a group, and rural working class Americans who primarily constitute the core of Middle America. I was curious about their voting habits as a group, after interacting with some folks here on Twitter and elsewhere. So I looked into it. In the below I share some of my findings.

The multigenerational California cultural crisis is finally at the front door of our little town. My wife has to avoid certain places now with the kids because of a growing DEI customer base. House goes up for sale this week. Local gas station bought up by Dots. No one knows them. They don’t put up Fourth of July decorations. Did nothing for Memorial Day. Play subversive rap music. Zero interest in conversation.

The contemporary Evangelical mind has adapted itself to the prevailing instincts of the therapeutic state. It can’t be exaggerated the extent to which distortions of Biblical themes characterize the subversion of the bourgeois American Evangelical. Thread I will add to over time: They have corrupted the virtue of meekness into a lethargic moral passivity.

A lot of good people on the anti-Left side of things, especially those influenced by thinkers associated with the Mises Institute don’t understand why people like myself continue to bring up Classical Liberalism as problematic. After all, they rightly point out, the entire 20th Century was a repudiation and revolution against classical liberalism. Liberalism, as people even like Paul Gottfried have pointed out, was sort of a myth since the latter half of the 19th century. First the Progressive movement and then the formalization of those impulses in the

One of the things that we see in a world dominated by social media and digital technology is the pervasive presence of those whose entire world is Twitter. This person, who doesn’t know me or my actual offline life, is convinced I am living in sin because I liked a meme. 1/3

https://twitter.com/blakecallens/status/1666825447236091906

Part of it of course can be amusing. But then you realize that these people actually live like this. They see something on the internet and they conjure up complexes of nefarious ideas about that person, without having no real idea of who they are. They call themselves 2/4

People who consider the concept of Decline as an outdated thesis like to point out that the 70s crime explosions and cultural strifes were just as bad as the present moment and that these things ebb and flow over decades. But this ignores significant changes in central banking… …that occurred in the 70s and 80s, leading to a false prosperity that has characterized American economic life over the following 40 years. It was the use of cheap credit and an expanding monetary supply that created a Bandaid Complex that allowed us to ignore cultural rot

As I argued in my essay Triumph of the Political, the classical liberal fails to recognize the essentially temporal nature of all attempts at liberalism. The liberal state does not “have within it the tools to prevent its own subversion and takeover.” It cannot sustain itself. Not only do they deny the traditional understanding of the origins of social order, they also deny: 1) Burnham’s insights into the nature of power, 2) Schmitt’s insights into the nature of the political, and 3) Gramsci’s insights into the nature of cultural hegemony.

Out in the shop this morning to finish up this bad boy. Built from scratch.

One of the problems that modernist Evangelicals have in dealing with political theory actually stems from something absorbed from enlightenment thinking; namely, the presumed need to have a universal model for the ideal society. Like political rationalism which seeks to work out in detail every aspect of a social order based on reason, so certain Christians will demand of the Bible a role of determining all details of law & order. This denigrates what Schmitt refers to as the “Concept of the Political.”

Political theory time: Related to the CN debate I suppose, but for the record and for future reference, one of the things that is going to most set me apart from the overall pack is the extent of my historicism and particularity. I don’t approach theory in terms of blueprinting… our ideal societies or political orders. I am generally critical of the use of the Bible (like OT Civil Law) toward this end as well, as if the particular conditions of one political situation makes demands of all others. I believe strongly in the preeminence of cultural norms,

Within the realm of Conservative Evangelicalism we have the 20thCentury-Zeitgeist Evangelical; among his many bad habits is to take statements related specifically to the context of the Temporary/Civil Kingdom & without any justification whatsoever drag them into context of the Kingdom of Christ where he can declare that such statements have absolutely no room in Christ's Church & reprimand those who make the original observations. This is an easy path to the appearance of pious orthodoxy & Twitter is flooded with masters of this performative art.

The Woke Left is actually right about some things. “Conservatives” sometimes instinctually fight against these claims because they are often, unfortunately, classical liberals. And no longer know what they are supposed to be conserving.

Will add to this 🧵 over time: [Will try to keep my opinions in brackets].

Modernist evangelicals operate on the assumption that because grace transcends cultural norms, the latter are therefore superfluous, even distracting. In doing this, they participate in the spirit of the age which seeks social destruction in the name of individual emancipation.

https://twitter.com/contramordor/status/1639444769104592897

One observation that comes out of this is in the example of the debate over whether boys playing with trains and girls with dolls is a product of nurture or nature. Leftists argue that it’s nurture, and conservatives often take the nature side. But: While