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Liberals and liberty — 43 Comments

1. “Petty tyrant” sums up Andrew Cuomo to a tee.

2. Petty tyrants are indeed everywhere, and almost no-one on the left defends free speech any longer. One of the most troubling aspects of the current insanity is the increasingly totalitarian nature of Big Tech, Facebook having recently created a ridiculous “Supreme Court” of content moderation, with most of those twenty chosen being distinctly hostile to the expression of any opinions, no matter how factually-based, which dissent from progressive orthodoxy.

3. Perception is a biatch

   Media Lies: Democrat Governors Doing Great Jobs Despite Higher Virus Death Rates
   https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-green/2020/05/13/media-bias-democrats-and-covid19-n390362

   its not whats real, its what you think is real…

   if you think there is a floor there, you will walk off the roof and enter splatterdom
   if you think disease is from something in the miasma, bloodletting is great
   if you think Obey will only be applied to the other, then your free to want it

   On Fear:
   I would say blowing the head off of someone who is got important discoveries on Covid to share will put a damper on things… wonder where the guy who won the Turing award is now?

4. As David Horowitz, the radical lefty turned conservative likes to say, inside every liberal is a dictator screaming to get out

5. “I’m beginning to think the desire for liberty versus the desire to control others might just be something innate.” – Neo

   “Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.” – Robert A. Heinlein

   “The sad thing is that even those liberals who love liberty are for the most part voting for people dedicated to ending it.” – Neo

   Every stick you pick up has two ends.
   A lot of people are discovering that their votes for Democrats in support of some cherished, and genuine, liberal principle ended up giving them a government that then destroyed some of their other desiderata.

   Although I cheered Elon Musk’s threat to move his California Tesla plant to Texas, I also greatly feared he and his workers would just bring along the attitude that Neo describes above.

   I hope I never forget the news clip of a man opening his first insurance premium after ObamaCare passed, and giving the shocked response: “Sure, I want everyone to have health insurance, but I didn’t think I would have to pay for it!”

6. RE: Elon Musk, my friends and I said the same thing. I want to cheer on people leaving the broken cesspit that once-magical California has become, but the last thing that Arizona and Texas want or need is more deep-blue ex-Californians moving to those states and trying desperately to recreate that cesspit.

7. I’m going to borrow a comment from one of those posts Neo wrote earlier:
   https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/04/27/fear-is-an-opportunity-for-tyranny/#comment-2491816
   “My mom and my friends are decent people, but they are in a place where they would do bad things out of fear. They didn’t even need a local tyrant to become this way.
   Living in a place where facts don’t matter is a nightmare.” – KyndyllG

   Without meaning any offense to these friends and relations, this is exactly what happened in Germany and Russia: by creating fear and constantly reinforcing it, Hitler & Lenin generated obedience to edicts that most people would never have countenanced without that preconditioning. And, of course, the Nazis and Communists gave power to people who naturally tend toward controlling others.

   Bad combination.

   I think that is the reason why so many of the people who risked their lives to save Jews (and others) were those who had their principles rooted in religious convictions that put them outside of the manufactured fear-mongering AND did not have that desire for control.

   Maybe both parts are necessary.

   And it may be time to repeal Godwin’s Law.

8. Took our dogs for a walk on the town green and saw two people on those racing bike ride by complete with the tight clothing, helmets, and of all things masks. What kind of person thinks a mask is necessary when riding a bike outside in the bright sunshine? Have they not read anything about the virus? Or more scary, they are virtue signaling and showing their obedience to the great government.

9. See Michael Barone — Hard America vs. Soft America. Daddy party vs Mommy party.

   The response to the virus just provided a clear example of how liberals cannot do logic. Crisis provides clarity. The liberal response to lockdown is the same instinct which gives us $15 min wage, global warming policies, me too, and Obamacare. Simple-minded and completely emotional. Try to explain that their policy preferences actually make things worse and their brains do not function.

10. Liberals, liberty for me but not for thee. Some of the staunchest liberals I have known for decades as friends are some of the most prejudices people against minorities when they let down their guard. They want a society which makes good decisions for people who, in their judgement, are not capable of making the proper decisions. When asked about their support for abortion they will tell you how expensive it wold be for society if all those underclass women had all of the babies they conceive. They attach social values to most every facet of our lives and love to judge people who differ having conservative opinions.

    Last time my sister-in-law and her husband visited here in Texas as usual their conversations were about how messed up Trump and conservatives are and why did Texans need so many guns, etc. I got tired of just nodding my head and spoke up explaining why he was mistaken on a subject and I might have severed that relationship forever. These folks recently moved from the California wine country where she drove her Mercedes, he his Porsche and they kept their nice little four place airplane in a hanger, they sold their California custom home and moved to Arizona because California was becoming too messed up and thank goodness they did not come to Texas.

11. “they sold their California custom home and moved to Arizona because California was becoming too messed up and thank goodness they did not come to Texas.” – OldTexan

    “Don’t mess with Texas” is a good motto, but the people running away from their own messes will bring them along.

12. Sefton at Ace linked this post by Carole Brown at American Thinker, so might as well cut to the chase.
    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/police_state_dry_run_a_huge_success.html

    When the coronavirus landed on our shores, communist China came with it.

    We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn’t all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our lives are being destroyed as the left solidifies and expands their oppressive powers. We’ve been herded around like cattle, threatened, isolated, confined, silenced, and arrested. You name it, it’s happening.

    You tell me if what follows sounds like the United States, or China.
    …
    There is one thing and one thing only they desire: power. And they’re having at it. So far, the police state has been a wild success.

    She includes a massive number of links to stories documenting her claims.

13. Brown quotes Dennis Prager from March.
    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/coronavirus-and-dam-thats-been-broken-dennis-prager/

    But the longer-term ripple effects are potentially far worse. Economic disasters rarely remain only economic disasters. To give a particularly dramatic example, the Nazis came to power because of economics more than any other single reason, including Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Versailles Treaty or anti-Semitism. Nazi success at the polls was almost entirely related to the Weimar economy. Communist parties don’t fare well in robust economies, but they’re very tempting when people are in dire economic straits. Only God knows what economic dislocation the shutting down of American and other Western economies will lead to. I am not predicting a Nazi or communist ascendancy, but economic and political disaster may be as likely, or even more likely, than a health disaster.

    But here is a prediction: If the government can order society to cease functioning, from restaurants and other businesses to schools, due to a possible health disaster, it is highly likely that a Democratic president and Congress will similarly declare emergency and assert authoritarian rule in order to prevent what they consider the even greater “existential threat” to human life posed by global warming.

    The dam has been broken. Maybe it was necessary. But when dams break, flooding follows.

14. Excerpted from the Ace post above:

    It warms the cockles of the heart to see Shelly Luther refuse to kneel before a hack-in-black demagogue and kiss his ring, and now 77-year-old Michigan barber Karl Manke tell Whitmer and her attack bitch Dana Nessel to FOAD. But the willingness for the citizenry of places like California, New York and Washington to just go along is frightening.

    Not everyone’s cockles are warmed; some are still part of the “third of the population not standing with us” — to wit, Kevin Williamson:
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-lockdown-protests-law-enforcement-should-enforce-law/

    Being a normally law-abiding person myself (I don’t even speed up at yellow lights), I would usually agree that protesters have to be willing to “do the time” until the courts catch up with the Constitution, but Williamson’s potshots at the Texas officials remonstrating with Judge Kiss-my-ring totally miss the mark.

15. J.J Sefton avers that if Trump wins, “things could get very ugly and very quickly.”

    We need to expand that concern +/or fear.
    I expect JJS sees the “youth” turning out in mass violent demonstrations, in all our Democrat-run major cities, to which I say, So? The Chesa Boudin denizens will let them have their way, but what is the sought-after result? To trash and burn down their own rats-nests?
    The National Guards of the states with the big Democrat metropoli-NY,NJ,MA, PA, IL, CA, MN, WA- all have Democrat governors, but presidential authority overrules the govs in the control/deployment of their Guards.
    So if the NG is mobilized by POTUS to quell, and succeeds, and martial law is imposed to further deal with the emergency, what next?

    All of this will obviously play right into Xi’s hands. The Chicomms will be smiling; a trade setback is a small thing to the millenia-old Middle Kingdom, which will remain as the stronger entity.

16. AesopFan:

    Oh the sensitive and nuanced Kevin Williamson who wrote about lower class white poverty and social disfunction, and towns that ought to just die and blow away? People protesting about loss of freedoms and loss of ability to earn a living or worship should comply indefinitely with emergency orders and edicts? FOAD Kevin. Learn to code. You ain’t “essential.”

17. Ace comes up with a title almost as good as one from Bryan a few days back*.
    http://ace.mu.nu/archives/387289.php
    May 15, 2020
    The Karenwaffe Propadanda Media Which Has Demanded That Americans Gladly Give Up Their Livelihoods Now Whines and Cries When Covid Comes to Claim Their Jobs

    *https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/05/12/covid-19-making-predictions/#comment-2494086
    “Jay’s Kontaktverfolgungskorps” – Bryan Lovely on May 13, 2020 at 7:27 pm

18. Ha!

19. In the beginning of the end, we’ll have 1930s era unemployment and bankruptcies, metro areas will burn, and rightfully turn into totalitarian fiefdoms, deep blue states will whine and moan for federal bailouts, and very few on the left will look into the mirror and realize they voted for this fate.

20. @parker The reality seems more likely to be that yours becomes a self-negating prophecy: we’ll have 1930s era unemployment and bankruptcies, metro areas will burn, and rightfully turn into totalitarian fiefdoms,

    This is an obvious fear, so the huge stimulus bill after bill after bill will be set up to avoid such bankruptcies. The crisis seems more likely to be unexpected.

    How can one expect the unexpected? Neither self-fulfilling nor self-negating, but instead generally non-prophecized.

    Or, maybe the very visible drift of outlawing hate speech becomes, like maybe in Hungary, outlawing of speech critical of the gov’t. And the post-Trump gov’t keeps getting more powerful, and giving more power to all those petty dictators in so many Democrats.

    Democrats do not love liberty – and the more Reps support liberty, the more the Dems will be against those supported by Reps. The key freedom they do support, self-identification (self-actualization?), is both non-scientific and in opposition to reality when it comes to transgenders.

    The other general freedom Dems like, sex and “responsible promiscuity”, does not work for creating responsible societies and good families. Politics is downstream from culture, and the left / liberals / Democrats have mostly won the culture war.

    I expect big state pensions to start “bankrupting” state gov’ts in the next few years. How that irresponsibility is solved will be a big clue on the real status of culture / politics, at that time.

    Interesting times.
    Just like Chinese curse.

21. What really happened at Wuhan.
    https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-11-at-8.37.12-PM.png?w=1004&ssl=1

22. It’s worth re-reading what Erika said here about responses to Whitmer.

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/05/14/dire-predictions-for-georgia-and-florida-covid-deaths-have-so-far-not-panned-out/#comment-2494380
    Erika Reily on May 15, 2020 at 9:53 am said:
    “I have a friend in Michigan who posts on Facebook about their circumstances fairly regularly. I asked, “What do people think of your governor’s actions? Are they going to vote her out, or do they appreciate her for keeping them safe?” She said she thinks it’s 50/50 and the following comments on the post bore that out. Around half of her friends said they are so grateful that Governor Whitmer is being a strong leader who is putting their safety first.”

23. Powerline give some information for skeptics looking for stories.
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/observations-on-the-great-hunkering-15.php

    There is so much good (and also bad) analytical work appearing every day that calls into question the conventional wisdom about both COVID-19 and the hard lockdown remedy that just about every country has adopted. There’s so much that I can’t keep up, and can’t decide from day to day which items to pass along to Power Line readers. Fortunately for us, the British journalist Toby Young has put together a pretty good one-stop-shopping site called Lockdown Sceptics. Worth a look each day.

    Other good recent reads on lockdown skepticism include Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic (“Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously“), and Matt Ridley writing about the train wreck of Neil Ferguson’s “crude mathematical guesswork.”

24. This is a prime example of how blinders work – Taibbi can see what the Left has done to civil liberties (one of the few on that side of the aisle that does) but still claims he doesn’t understand why.

    Rather than reposting the whole thing, here’s an except on the Sullivan/Flynn thread.

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/05/14/the-law-judge-sullivan-and-michael-flynn-what-now/#comment-2494483

25. Neo:

    When you were a liberal, you were not, it seems, a leftist.

    But, when you were a liberal, did you hold (at that time) any principles which would serve as a firewall against abandoning Freedom X in order to obtain some desirable Y? Or did your liberalism amount to more of a general attitude, not necessarily anchored to any unchanging metaphysical or ethical convictions?

    For example, would you have kept Freedom of Association sacrosanct even if it meant there could be clubs — possibly important, socially-influential clubs — that didn’t admit African-ancestry (or Hispanic or Asian or Anglo) members?

    Would you have defended religious liberty even if 95%+ of the hospitals and clinics had been operated by orthodox Christians of one stripe or another, with the practical result that for most Americans, the practical requirements for obtaining an abortion or sex-change or voluntary sterilization surgery meant traveling out-of-state, sometimes over 500 miles?

    I don’t ask this because I’m trying to spring any kind of “gotcha” on you, Neo; and perhaps the particular questions I just asked aren’t the best examples of the kind of thing I’m looking for.

    But here’s my thesis: There are two kinds of “liberalism”:

    Type 1 (stable): Principled “classical liberalism” which theoretically anchors itself in Natural Law, and thereby in morality as something objective, unchanging, and calculable-in-principle, with its implicit rejection of Nominalism, Utilitarianism/Consequentialism, etc., and its favoring of Systems over Intentions for achieving outcomes, rejection of emotion as being relevant to moral reasoning, etc. This is marked “stable” because, while it comes across sometimes as cold and unfeeling or even mean and is thus hard to popularize, only Republics where such a philosophy is strongly held by most persons can preserve liberty as an ethos.

    Type 2 (unstable): Niceness-based, flexible, anti-traditional, faddish, or emotional/associative-based liberalism adopted as a general attitude without firmly-nailed-down principles anchored in some base reality. This view doesn’t obsess about consistency of principles because that seems too “ideological” and is associated with mean people or uncool eggheads. This view can also be swayed towards nearly any policy whatsoever provided it can be sold as nice and a relaxation of strictures; the idea of new policies sold in this fashion having long-term deleterious consequences, setting bad precedents, or creating perverse incentives is disregarded. This view is called “unstable” liberalism inasmuch as it cannot preserve even the liberality-of-attitude which makes it initially attractive to its adherents, let alone any firm social protections for this or that form of practical liberty. As a consequence, this view, as a movement, has a short “half-life”; bits of the population that holds it are always decaying into Leftism.

    Now, in America, her Founding Fathers (setting aside personal moral failings and the nasty compromise/hypocrisy regarding slavery) were, as a group, very firm adherents of Type 1 Liberalism.

    This makes Type 1 Liberalism the tradition in America. At one time, it was the status quo. Overturning it would constitute a kind of radical revolution. Maintaining it meant conserving what was already present. In that sense, conservatives were all “liberals.” But they were Type 1 “liberals”; adherents of stable liberalism.

    Now, the last 100 years’ changes in American politics have, from decade to decade, been almost entirely Leftward. As such, they have (historically, until recently) represented victories for Type 2 Liberalism at the expense of Type 1 Liberalism. And now, since Type 2 Liberalism is unstable and more than half of the Type 2 Liberals have decayed into Leftists, more-recent political shifts represented victories for Leftism at the expense of an odd coalition consisting of the few remaining Type 1 Liberals (which in America are called “conservatives”) and a few remaining Type 2 Liberals (think of Dershowitz and Dave Rubin). As fewer and fewer undecayed Type 2 Liberals remain, they increasingly recognize Leftists as the enemies of liberals and form alliances with Type 1 Liberals.

    If that picture is accurate — and I think it is, broadly — then I’m curious, Neo: What (if any) foundational principles underlay your (Type 2) Liberalism that prevented you from decaying towards Leftism? If there weren’t any, then after 9/11, did you suddenly identify and adopt principles you hadn’t previously held, which began moving you away from Type 2 Liberalism, towards Type 1?

    Sorry for the long question; but I hope the additional detail makes it clear what I’m asking.

    P.S. I should add that I no longer think of Type 1 Liberalism as the status quo; that was lost long ago. Right now, a mix of Type 2 and Leftism is the status quo which is why “conservatives” come across as rabble-rousers or revolutionaries. They are exactly revolutionaries: They want to overthrow the status quo and replace it with the Type 1 Liberalism we haven’t had in a long while. A counter-revolution is still a revolution; and a revolution in favor of stability will still destabilize our current crop of destabilizers!

26. People will do bad things out of fear. But where we are now, I think, is people doing bad things in order to retain their place in the tribe.
    They are not killing people. They are saying and doing things which, to their horror, will enable those who will kill people.
    I have some FB friends who are continually going on about how morally wonderful it is, and they are, to wear masks. I wonder what they’ll do when the mask thing is officially ended. Some other, probably even more damaging virtue signaling.

27. I like to say, “Classical liberalism is about liberty. Modern liberalism is about spending liberally.”

    This crisis has brought all the people who just love telling other people what to do out of the woodwork. It was already obvious a couple of months ago. When are more people going to call out the self-righteous virtue signaling? The same people who are always scrambling to let the world know that they have the proper opinions on racism, sexism, immigration, guns, the environment, etc. immediately jumped on the “stay home” bandwagon. The pandemic has been politicized from the start.

28. The sole organizing principle of progressivism today is that all human capital resides within their own ranks. This increasingly manifests through social dominance rituals to undercut any real, imagined, or possible threats to this self-understanding.

    So liberty of all stripes must be increasingly undermined, along with citizenship and commercial capital, in order for progressives to better retain their policing powers over their conception of human capital.

29. I am acquainted with a number of inoffensive–speaking personally–liberals who are so sincere and committed and serious about…whatever their thing is…that it seems almost cruel to question it and them.
    The effort against plastic bags is one example and comparing the environmental impact of those versus reusable bags is never, ever considered. What’s the environmental impact of one case of the major drizzlies because you didn’t wash–which has what environmental impact–your organic cotton unbleached grocery bag? They do not entertain the thought and they are such nice people that it seems gratuitously cruel to mention it and get them upset. Plastic bags are their thing and part of their self-image, i guess.
    Now, with plastic bags mandated and reusables forbidden due to disease, what do they think? That disease was always an issue? Nope. They’ll go right along with plastic bags until allowed the reusables without the slightest hesitation or consideration.
    That was a lengthy set up. The same for all the bells and whistles of lockdown/mask/stay home. They are so sincere and committed and so personally nice that…you don’t want to offend them or make them feel bad by explaining things.

    Such as, if unlocking doesn’t lead to a spike, if levels are the same, it means locking down was meaningless. And all the effort they put into it….was great because doing such things is who they are.

    But they’re blindly accepting orders from on high which limit our freedom which is the last thing on their minds.

    Whatever their thing is, it’s more important than freedom.

30. AesopFan (at 11:03 PM), on “Taibbi can see what the Left has done to civil liberties… but still claims he doesn’t understand why.”

    Can you post a link, to a Taibbi essay which really illustrates your quite interesting point? Thanx in advance.

31. I’m sure I’m not the first to wonder if the real reason to “flatten the curve” (once it became clear the the medical system was not going to be overwhelmed) is to delay or prevent herd immunity, thus making sure the virus is still active come election time, or even bounces back over the Winter.

32. Type 1 liberals are known, sort of, in America as
    Libertarians; tho also often as small l-libertarians.

    In Europe, we often call ourselves “classical liberals”. (Tho I’m a small minority Christian faction in that small minority.)

    You can find us at the Hayek Foundation, or in America FEE or Cato Institute, possibly a bit still with the Libertarian Party (big L-Libbers).

    Too many Dems claim the “liberal” label based on the positive historical connotations, so it has become a partisan word essentially meaning supporting Democrats.

    The Dems control the colleges; the colleges have almost control over who becomes an “elite”, and Dem elites do not have to obey either the legal nor cultural laws & norms in the same way normal folk do, and Reps do. Dem control of the media insure cultural enforcement of Dem-positive norms.

    The elites will always be leaders of culture. Culture will always lead politics. Culture changes will always include tension between going forward with some new change, changing back to a prior state, and accepting the current status of some situation. Non-elites, too, have a big influence because they are a majority, often a massive majority – but almost always split with a faction that supports the elites.

    What will the post-fraud totals of votes be in November?

    Jello Biafra sang (before 1984):
    You will jog for the master race
    And always wear the happy face
    …
    Mellow out or you will pay!

    Now it’s 1984
    knock knock at your front door.
    It’s the suede denim secret police.
    We have come for your uncool niece.
    …

    California.
    Uber Alles.
    California U uuber Alles.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoA_zY6tqQw

    Even better than the Dead Kennedy’s “Holiday in Cambodia”.

    Thinking about how obese people are more at risk, the requirement to go jogging is something I haven’t heard much of by the little Dem fascists. But it won’t surprise me when it becomes a big thing.
    For their own good.

33. SuitTooNumb is worth repeating:
    The sole organizing principle of progressivism today is that all human capital resides within their own ranks. This increasingly manifests through social dominance rituals to undercut any real, imagined, or possible threats to this self-understanding.

    So liberty of all stripes must be increasingly undermined, along with citizenship and commercial capital, in order for progressives to better retain their policing powers over their conception of human capital.

34. To R.C.:

    Actually, I had exactly the same principles I have now, which would be classical liberal (type 1). I simply didn’t know that Democrats didn’t share them; it certainly was nowhere near as apparent when I was younger. I didn’t really have much of a grounding in political philosophy. Later on, I was busy with family things and didn’t notice the changes that much until about twenty years ago.

35. When I was growing up, “liberal” mostly meant things like being willing to give women and racial minorities a fair shot at enrolling in college or entering a profession, not to mention a right to an equal treatment under the Bill of Rights. I didn’t become disillusioned until well into the 90s, when it finally dawned on me that “progressive” income tax rates were designed to redistribute wealth rather than to fund the necessary functions of government.

    After 9-11, I was horrified to find that every ACLU member I was in touch with was convinced the attacks were our own fault for ignoring “root causes.” Friends I thought were into liberty took to trying to persuade me that the government should require restaurants to offer them salt-free, gluten-free, whatever-free options. They went straight from pot-smoking to indulging in hypochondria and wishing the government would keep them safe 24/7.

36. “Whatever their thing is, it’s more important than freedom.” – Richard

    I’ve never really understood people risking their lives and freedom in protests like those at Tienanmen and elsewhere, but we are close to seeing the same spirit in action here, although some people fear that even American police will use deadly force if ordered.
    It’s been known to happen.

37. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? … If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” — Solzhenitsyn

38. Note to Neo: I have been trying to post the Solzhenitsyn quote on different threads for three days. Finally this abridged version worked.
    Is the spam moderator actually looking for this well-known quote and censoring it??

39. Texan99,

    “They went straight from pot-smoking to indulging in hypochondria and wishing the government would keep them safe 24/7.”

    That’s hilarious!

40. Tom Grey and Cicero between 1pm and 2pm, 5/16,

    It seems like you’ve pretty much nailed it, explanation-wise.

    I haven’t been able to find it, but Victor Davis Hanson wrote an interesting piece about urban/urbane attitudes in Ancient Rome and how the Romans who labored in the countryside, producing the food the sophisticates ate and the wine they drank, were looked down upon even then. Being brilliant, VDH broke down the meanings of the Latin words, agrestis and rusticanus to show how they were used as insults, even then.

41. Rufus – haven’t seen that Hanson post, but here are a few that address the same subject, although without any “agrestis” or “rusticanus” definitions.

    https://www.city-journal.org/html/oldest-divide-14042.html
    “With roots dating back to our Founding, America’s urban-rural split is wider than ever.” Victor Davis Hanson Autumn 2015

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/globalization-modern-world-rome-satyricon/
    “Certain themes in The Satyricon are timeless and still resonate today.
    The abrupt transition from a society of rural homesteaders into metropolitan coastal hubs had created two Romes. One world was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan network of traders, schemers, investors, academics, and deep-state imperial cronies. Their seaside corridors were not so much Roman as Mediterranean. And they saw themselves more as “citizens of the world” than as mere Roman citizens. …His novel’s accepted norms are pornography, gratuitous violence, sexual promiscuity, transgenderism, delayed marriage, childlessness, fear of aging, homelessness, social climbing, ostentatious materialism, prolonged adolescence, and scamming and conning in lieu of working….But there was also a second Rome in the shadows. Occasionally the hipster antiheroes of the novel bump into old-fashioned rustics, shopkeepers, and legionaries. They are what we might now call the ridiculed “deplorables” and “clingers.”

    Even Petronius suggests that these rougher sorts built and maintained the vast Roman Empire. They are caricatured as bumpkins and yet admired as simple, sturdy folk without the pretensions and decadence of the novel’s urban drones.”

    https://www.hoover.org/research/dueling-populisms
    “Populism is seen as both bad and good because people disagree about what it represents and intends. In the present age, there are two different sorts of populism. Both strains originated in classical times and persist today.
    …
    We are still in the midst of a populist pushback against the two political parties. The nature and themes are ancient—on the one hand, an urban and radical effort to redistribute wealth and use government to enforce equality, and, on the other, a counter-revolutionary pushback of the middle classes determined to restore liberty, lim”

    Another of his articles has a similar POV, namely, we can actually learn something about today’s crises by reading about those of the past.
    Funny how that works.

    https://newcriterion.com/issues/2020/5/the-scab-the-wound-beneath

42. AesopFan,

    VDH is an impressive individual and a unique thinker. Too bad he can’t head the Department of Education and set the national curriculum.

43. This is just an experiment to see if the whole quote is acceptable this time.
    It has been rejected on several threads, several times each, since first attempted around 5-12 or so.
    Had another fail on 2020-5-17 and again 2020-5-18

    “… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” — Solzhenitysn

    Well, finally!
    I had to eliminate the entire front half of the quote to get this through the Censor-in-the-box.
    What the heck is the problem with this very famous quotation??

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