We often hear that the United States is a “republic not a democracy.”

This has great rhetorical effect for “conservatives”, and when I published my first book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, I often had to use the same language on radio interviews.

That is what “conservatives” understand.

I remember one leftist journalist asking me at a book signing, in an attempted gotcha moment, to describe the difference between a democracy and a republic, because after all, you vote for people in a republic and isn’t that democratic?

Bless his heart. Of course “democracy” exists in a “republican system” of government but he clearly confused the process of selecting people to serve in government with the system of government, i.e. not a monarchy or an oligarchy–though that is precisely what we have in a soft form today.

But that doesn’t really tell the whole story.

If the United States general government disappeared today, we would still have republican government in America.

In some cases it would even be more democratic.

That’s because the United States is a federal republic, or a republic of republics.

Every State already has a republican form of government mandated by its own constitution. That would not change in the event we had a State or a group of States secede from the Union or if the people of the States through a convention decided to abolish the entire central government.

Federalism, the glue that held the Union together until 1861, allowed for the States to handle most domestic concerns with the singular voice of the general government in foreign policy and trade.

That’s it.

This worked because the States had republican governments. The Constitution guaranteed that each State maintained a republican form, but no State wanted otherwise, not even if the righteous cause mythologists somehow think that governments in the South were “oligarchies.”

History does not support this claim. Thomas Jefferson, of course, insisted that New England, not the South, shaded closer to a monarchical system than any other region in America.

You don’t hear much about this anymore.

Republican governments is in the Anglo-American political DNA. That could change with the massive cultural shift taking place in the United States, but it would not entirely disappear.

Opponents of decentralization and federalism just don’t get it. They think the Sun rises and sets in Washington D.C.

We know otherwise, which is why you are thinking locally and acting locally.

I discuss republican government on Episode 780 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Any honest person knows the answer to the subject line is no.

But that hasn’t stopped “conservatives” from insisting the opposite.

This is a curious phenomenon tied directly to the “proposition nation” myth of America history.

Lincoln proclaimed that he was fighting for government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” in order to maintain the proposition that all men are created equal.

Even Thad Stevens, the “Great Commoner”, argued that Lincoln didn’t free a single slave.

So why do conservatives continue to peddle in this lie? They think it deflects the charge of racism and frees them from being tainted by evil men like John C. Calhoun.

This is why Harry Jaffa argued that equality was in fact “conservative.”

Now, granted, these conservatives are not promoting the “idea of equality” that ministers from the Church of Woke ram down our throats, but they opened a Pandora’s box by even partly siding with these dopes.

Equality naturally leads to “equity” and all of the Marxist-Leninist misery that follows.

“Conserving” nineteenth-century leftist claptrap is not really conservative.

Disney released a kids show recently that had the nerve to argue that Lincoln did not free the slaves. This was the one thing this woke abomination stated correctly.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave. Yes, slaves would abandon the plantation as the Union army moved through an area, but they quickly found out that refugee camps weren’t really bastions of freedom. They were selection camps designed to pick the most able-bodied people to dig ditches and fortifications.

The rest were left to get sick and die.

Of course, many slaves stayed on the plantations even with Union soldiers in the area and refused to work. They didn’t want any money. They weren’t Yankees, and Yankee work patterns did not neatly fit with Southern paternalism.

These truths make self-righteous “conservatives” uncomfortable. It’s really hilarious if you think about it.

The proposition nation Girondins cannot understand why their ungrateful woke subjects are lining up the guillotines for them, too.

In the end, no apostate is safe.

I discuss Lincoln and emancipation on Episode 777 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

In case you missed it last week, Joe Biden delivered his “State of the Union” address. We used to call these the annual message, but Woodrow Wilson thought that wasn’t parliamentarian enough and started the current tradition of the President getting going to deliver the message to Congress in person.

He wasn’t the first. Both Washington and Adams did it, but Jefferson stopped the practice, thankfully, for over one hundred years.

His reason? The President is not a king.

With all of the recent news of UFOs, earthquakes, Super Bowls, and other nonsense, the State of the Union has quickly faded.

It should. No one should really pay any attention to it.

But this address was unique for one reason: we are seeing what Wilson wanted, a parliamentarian government in action.

Several years ago, Joe Wilson of South Caroline yelled “You lie!” at Barack Obama during his State of the Union.

This broke decorum and Wilson was ripped in the press.

Why? Because you don’t insult the king, I mean president, to his face on live TV.

But what if the “king” was really just a prime minister who led his party through political battles in the House of Commons. If you’ve ever watched the British Parliament in action, you know how funny this can be.

Republicans yelled, booed, and acted like the British opposition during Biden’s speech. This was the closest I have ever seen to a prime minister parliamentary debate in the United States Congress.

Biden, of course, was one time a United States Senator, and he is comfortable being “Legislator in Chief,” a role never designed by the founding generation. They made sure of it.

That hasn’t stopped decades of legislative abuse from the executive branch, including Biden’s promise that he would veto any legislation he didn’t like when it crossed his desk. Not because it was unconstitutional or because it infringed on the rights of the other branches of government or the States. Nope. Because the Democrats don’t like it.

He also promised to get the United States into World War III. That more than anything else should damn his administration.

It seems, however, that Americans are too worried about Rihanna’s pregnancy, Chinese balloons, or fake classified document scandals to really worry about the real job of the American presidency: foreign policy.

The Romans figured out distractions can be important for maintaining power.

No one does it better than the American political class.

I talk about Biden’s really bad speech on Episode 776 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Pat Buchanan has penned his last weekly syndicated column.

That is a real loss for American conservatism and American political intellectual history.

Buchanan was a one man wrecking crew against the establishment. I didn’t always agree with his positions–he was too Lincolnian and Hamiltonian for my taste–but he always was thought provoking and often right.

He is also loyal. He defends Nixon to this day. Same for his Confederate ancestors.

That more than anything else is noteworthy in American politics.

Loyalty is hard to come by, but of course, Buchanan wasn’t really in American politics. He was always taking shots from the outside of American politics.

That made him great.

If you’re reading this email and you are interested in writing about American politics, read Pat Buchanan and skip William Buckley.

Buchanan knew how to grab a reader and riddle him with hard hitting point after point.

His pen was a Tommy Gun.

Buckley lounged in his chair, ran his fingers through his hair, and meandered around the issues until finally saying something worthwhile.

And by worthwhile I often mean CIA approved.

Buchanan wrote from a place of real culture, not some faux, half-cocked and barely distinguishable American “conservative” ideology like Buckley.

This is why Buckley butted heads with George Wallace (real culture) and Buchanan could thump about America first.

America had meaning. It wasn’t an idea. Protecting real people and a real place and not an intangible “proposition nation” made Buchanan attractive to a wide swath of the American public.

He smashed myths and took down sacred cows. Anyone willing to suggest that America should have stayed out of World War II has a spine of solid granite.

His prognostications about a “culture war” in America have largely come true. People laughed at him when he said it in 1992, but again, Buchanan said these things because he didn’t think America was created on an idea.

People made it, people, like him, who had skin in the game. When Jefferson insisted that people built America on their own blood and hook, he wasn’t waxing philosophical about some theoretical America. They were the sweaty people who Pat loves.

Buchanan also didn’t care if he upset the right people, but he did it with a warm smile and Christian charity. There’s no other way to explain how he could sit across from some of the Washington beltway crowd for years and tell them off without losing his cool.

I met Pat once in 2000 in Columbia, South Carolina when he was running for President. He wouldn’t remember it, but I have the pictures, somewhere. He is a real Southern gentlemen, and his wife a great Southern lady. Pat put flowers on the grave of his Confederate ancestor right in front of the establishment media when he was running for office. Who else would do that today?

Not our “conservative” apparatchik collaborators in Congress.

Pat ran for President like John C. Calhoun ran for President. It wasn’t for power but to make a point, to have influence over policy in the future.

He knew he wasn’t going to win in 1996 or 2000, but without those runs, “America First” would not have had the firepower it did in 2016.

There aren’t really any men like Pat Buchanan left among mainstream politicos. That’s too bad, because an America with more rock-ribbed conservatives would be a better place to live.

I discuss Pat and this great article by Tom Piatak on Episode 775 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Should we follow the original Constitution or the Constitution of 1868?

If you suggest the former, then according to many “conservatives” and libertarians, you are walking into a minefield.

You see, many Americans see the original Constitution as “pro-slavery.” This stance comes from the arguments of nineteenth-century abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who considered the document to be a “covenant with death.”

On the other hand, some abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Lysander Spooner thought the Constitution was explicitly anti-slavery. Douglass, in fact, came to this position after reading Spooner.

Neither are correct. The Garrisonian position is more popular among those on the left because it works well with their political positions. If the Constitution “enshrined slavery,” and if the document was nothing more than a “covenant with death”, then scrapping it makes logical sense.

Who says the 1850s are dead? It’s not the right that’s living in the 1850s, its the progressive left who constantly dust off early Republican Party talking points.

The right likes to use the Douglass narrative because it buttresses their Lincolnian myth and theoretically helps them ward off charges of racism.

We know that doesn’t really work.

The reality is that the Constitution was neither proslavery nor antislavery. It was neutral. The word “slave” never appears in the document, and while Americans could make the case that the United States government was the government of the “white man”–and what else would it have been in the 1840s?–race was not specified in any article of the Constitution.

It did not “enshrine slavery.” It allowed for States to use federalism to either maintain or abolish the institution. It continued the international slave trade for 20 years, but gave the power to Congress to abolish it at that point. It mandated that fugitives from the law face justice. It did not give Congress any power over the institution either pro or con. It did protect property rights, and as slaves were property in the nineteenth century, the United States government had a legal obligation to protect that property in federal territory, hence the rub with the common property of the United States, but again, that does not make the document “proslavery.”

Barnett and I, whom I have sharply criticized over the last three days, agree on this point.

Just because the left wants to make stupid arguments doesn’t mean we should come up with our own stupid arguments to push back, like abandoning real originalism for “14th Amendment originalism.”

You know who wins in that scenario?

The progressive left and the progressive right.

Not you or I.

I wrap up my three episodes on Barnett’s piece with Episode 774 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

People have a hard time separating slavery from racism.

The two terms have become synonymous in American society because of the history of the slavery in America.

This description lacks complexity, as white Europeans were also enslaved, albeit at a different rate and manner, as white indentured servitude disappeared long before African slavery in the United States.

But that does not mean it didn’t exist, as did black slaveowners, most of whom owned slaves for profit over humanitarian concern.

Regardless, Americans eventually associated slavery with Africans and no other racial group.

Yet, you could be anti-slavery and believe in “white supremacy” in the 18h and 19th centuries. The vast majority of Americans would not have known any other explanation for a stable society. Western civilization was, after all, crafted by Europeans.

And most emancipationists and later abolitionists were indeed “racists” under a modern definition of term.

The notable exceptions would be the several leading American black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and some white radicals like the Grimke sisters of South Carolina. But these were the exceptions in the antebellum United States.

Modern historians who dabble in the business of “systemic white supremacy” never can answer one simple question: what was the alternative for 18th or 19th century people living in the 18th or 19th centuries?

Many dreamed of a world without slavery, Southerners like Jefferson included, but most could not figure out how to reconcile abolition with a multi-racial society, not even in New England where African-Americans made up less than one percent of the population and yet faced severe restrictions on their lives and property.

They did not think Africans were capable of self-government, not even after the War, as Connecticut among other Northern States prohibited blacks from voting. That only changed with the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Antebellum Americans did not hold our modern views on race, and to insist that they did and that their actions should have matched our own is the very definition of presentism.

This is why I argue that Lincoln’s “proposition nation” was indeed a myth, not because Jefferson didn’t write it or some people–even many members of the founding generation–didn’t rhetorically use it, but because actions spoke louder than words. American commitment to racial egalitarianism, or any egalitarianism for that matter, was suspect at best and mostly non-existent.

They didn’t believe it beyond political rights for citizens, and citizenship had restrictions.

Even Jefferson’s proposed revisions to the Virginia Constitution limited voting rights and citizenship.

So much for Jefferson’s belief in “all men are created equal.”

So what?

Does it change the fact that these men drafted two constitutions for the United States and several State constitutions or that they won two wars against the British, a naval war against France and were, in my opinion, the greatest generation in American history?

No other generation comes close.

That’s why “conservatives” who run around championing Lincoln and the 1850s Republican Party aren’t really conserving anything except a nineteenth century leftist dream based on a real myth, the myth of the proposition nation and the righteous cause.

Is that “conservative”? Randy Barnett seems to think so, which is why I spent three episodes of The Brion McClanahan Show this week on Barnett’s piece.

You aren’t going to win an argument with a leftist by relying on leftist talking points. You’ve already conceded the field.

Part II is now up.

Should we adhere to the original Constitution of 1789 or the Constitution of 1868?

You might be asking, “What is the difference?”

Last year, I talked about the rise of the “Progressive Originalists”, those who buttress their loose construction on a distorted reading of the 14th Amendment.

That is the Constitution of 1868, and there is no louder supporter of this position than Professor Randy Barnett.

Barnett is a “conservative/libertarian” who claims to be a “14th Amendment Originalist.”

Though Barnett does not explicitly say so, he designed his recent book on the topic to be a thorough take down of Raoul Berger’s Government of Judiciary and subsequent The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

Leftist legal scholars hate both with a passion and let Berger know it throughout the 1980s. Why? Because if Berger was correct, and he was, then the entire basis of the modern civil rights movement was built on a house of cards.

In other words, these lefties don’t want to believe it because it was slaying their sacred cow. Barnett rides to the rescue, sort of.

Barnett unconvincingly argues that those who insist that the author of the Fourteenth Amendment, John Bingham of Ohio, really intended the amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights and in the process provide the intellectual firepower for the expansive civil rights programs of the general government.

Bingham’s reputation has been revived in the last twenty years by people like Eric Foner, James Oakes, and others who insist that he was a “second Founding Father” who crafted an amendment that would transform the United States.

They are partially correct, but not because that is what the Fourteenth Amendment intended to do. It is only because that is how the federal courts have interpreted the Amendment.

Barnett calls this the correct position.

As a result, he urges “originalists” to reject the “original Constitution” in favor of the Constitution as altered by the Republican Party and the Fourteenth Amendment.

I get why. This takes the “racist” sting off the table, but it also creates its own fairy tale of interpretation.

Barnett wrote a long essay on this position and the “proslavery” or “antislavery” origins of the Constitution. It deserved a thorough review, so I will tackle it on the next THREE episodes of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Part 1, Episode 772, dropped today.

Jon Meacham is one of the worst Lincoln worshipers in America.

His latest book on Lincoln is pure garbage.

But every establishment dope wants his approval.

Take for example Professor Manisha Sinha. She has been featured on major cable television shows and has won awards for her work on slavery. She is the establishment’s establishment.

Yet, she thinks she is underappreciated, that is until Jon Meacham mentioned her in a recent book review for the New York Times.

This is how these people operate. They sit around waiting for someone with a name to point out their “brilliance.” Why? Because they are insecure, thin skinned activists playing historian.

The funniest part? These people don’t realize they are all on the same team, even the “conservatives” among them.

Meacham spent the entire book review taking apart Ron DeSantis for claiming that the Declaration of Independence created the anti-slavery movement in America.

This coming from a man who thinks Lincoln walked on water because he made the case that the Declaration of Independence created the anti-slavery movement in America.

He has to differentiate himself from those evil conservatives, the same conservatives who believe in the same righteous cause Lincoln myth.

Meacham pointed to earlier anti-slavery movements in America while leaving out some really important details, most importantly that even after 1776 most Americans tolerated slavery and nearly all were what we would call racists today.

That was the case long before the Declaration as well, even among our glorious New England saints who spoke about the evils of slavery while making large amounts of money on the slave trade and Caribbean slave plantations.

As I’ve said for a long time now, action speaks louder than words, and Americans may have made lofty statements about “equality” but no one really believed it.

Nor did they define it the way we do today.

That is another story.

I love these kinds of stupid essays because they provide great Podcast fodder. I discuss Meacham’s essay on Episode 770 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

World War III seems to be on the horizon, and every establishment politico is rushing headlong into the abyss.

This is the message from the stammering, boot-licking hacks during the Davos summit a couple of weeks ago.

Except they don’t seem to mind. Climate change, ya know?

A little nuclear war could be good for the environment. Anything to stop global warming.

This is like a new Keynesianism. Instead of digging holes, filling it with money, and digging it out in the name of “prosperity,” we’ll launch a few tactical nukes and wipe out a few cities in the name of stopping “climate change.”

Of course, the extra benefit would be that we would have to rebuild these cities. Cha ching! Keynes is smiling on from hell.

Who is driving all of this new war drum lunacy? The Biden administration, of course.

At least, “the world” now thinks the United States is muscling up again after years of “managed decline.”

They never liked Trump even though he was really one of them. He was just honest about being a crook.

They want to hide the fact.

The Ukraine wants tanks? Sure, how about 31. The Ukraine wants F-16s? On the docket.

How long before the Ukraine wants nukes? That’s coming.

American foreign policy used to be driven by sober realism. Even Biden understands we have natural advantages, i.e. two oceans separating us from the world, and so the United States pursued a real “peace through strength” foreign policy–meaning economic strength–for much of its early history. That was “America First.”

Non-intervention in foreign affairs kept Americans out of foolish European wars. How many more white crosses do we need in Europe?

On second thought, they probably wouldn’t hand out white crosses any more. Too Christian. It would have to be a rainbow flag adorning every grave.

“America First” was always a bad word to the Davos lizards. It meant they had to go at it on their own without American money and blood.

That’s why Biden fits right in and why the establishment is so dangerous.

Corrupt, too. Just wait until more information hits about the Hunter Biden laptop. It’s going to get worse for Joe, at least to the public eye. The establishment clearly wants him out or they wouldn’t have allowed for this information to become public.

It the “world is bullish” on America again, it’s time to stock up on anti-radiation meds.

That can only mean bad things for Americans.

Higher inflation, shortages, and war.

And in contrast to the Bush wars of the 1990s and 2000s, Biden has poked a fight with a bigger and more corrupt bear.

His “mission accomplished” speech may never happen.

I talk about “American Decline” on Episode 768 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

The generals are gathering in their masses.

And the United States and NATO are sending tanks to Ukraine to fight the Russians.

31 from the United States to be exact. This stupid idea is the result of the stupid establishment.

It seems the establishment never learns the lessons of war.

Or maybe they know full well that we war helps them expand their power, and if you defend the 51st State, the Ukraine, then you have helped support the latest thing.

I can’t wait for the yard signs. The Ukrainian flag won’t be enough.

You’ll soon have to show your allegiance by buying more war bonds.

I chalk this up to World War II. You see, no one stopped Hitler, and because Putin in the new Hitler, we must do everything in our power to stop Adolph Putin.

Or maybe it’s the Vietnam syndrome. The United States has to win at all costs and never surrender.

I wonder how long it will take for Biden to show up on an aircraft carrier with “Mission Accomplished.”

He won’t be landing in a fighter plane, so it might have to be on dry land.

If we really heeded the lessons of war, the United States would steer clear of the Ukraine and would stop funding the conflict.

It would also heed the lessons of the founding generation and adopt a real “peace through strength” policy that centers on “American First” and non-intervention.

I would also add the Congress could slash the military budget and it wouldn’t matter much. Some Republicans showed a willingness to do this and were rebuffed by the neocon war hawks in the House.

You can’t fix their kind of stupid.

I discuss the real lessons of war on Episode 766 of The Brion McClanahan Show.