Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

If the American colonies had been given seats in Parliament, there would not have been taxation without representation, and the Revolution of 1776 might have been avoided.  But it was impractical, because of the distances and travel times involved.

Today there’s no reason the English could not send Congressmen to Washington to represent them.  Great Britain is losing Scotland, with Northern Ireland a question mark.  There may be logical ways to provide what remains with multiple states, such as separate statehood for Londonistan and Wales, so that total representation in the United States Senate would consist of a total of ten Senators.

Rather than leap into this new arrangement, a transitional bilateral treaty could begin a gradual confederation.  Other parts of the Anglosphere might want to participate as well.  James Bennett, and his The Anglosphere Challenge, deserve another look.  The predictions in Zeihan’s The Accidental Superpower are unfolding before our eyes.

While this idea of English statehood is only semi-serious, it represents one of many possibilities that Brexit includes.  The world changed with that vote.  How it changes is up to the people who made it happen.

Brexit was an attack on the Center from both left and right, with disgruntled Tory and Labour voters uniting to form a majority.  Trump, Cruz and Sanders voters also span the ideological spectrum, united in their disdain for the corruption and arrogance of the political establishment, aka the Center.

The EU was morphing into a multi-national superstate, which spelled its doom.  Its demise is the end of such experiments.  The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are other recent examples of the failure of such entities.  Federalism, localism and the fully sovereign nation-state are the future.

Statehood for England is a mind attack, and just one of many possibilities as the Old World Order breaks up.  The last time something like this happened was a little over a hundred years ago, as the Russian, German, Austrian and Ottoman empires collapsed after World War I.  The international response was the League of Nations, a pathetic joke, and some toothless  disarmament.  We’ll do better this time.  With change, there is hope.

The Center cannot hold.

 

After months of freezing, starving and eventually cannibalizing one another, in February of 1847 the survivors of the Donner Party were rescued by fellow Americans from California.  Thirteen year old Virginia Reed was among them, and although she was skin and bones, and barely alive, one of the young men who saved her asked her to marry him.  She declined, but was a bride within a year and had nine children.  Virginia Street in downtown San Jose is named for her.  Three months  after her rescue she wrote her cousin Mary back in Springfield, Illinois, “Tell the girls that this is the greatest place for marrying they ever saw and that they must come to California if they want to marry.”  (From Bernard DeVoto’s “The Year of Decision, 1846”.  That is a book you should read if you’re interested in this part of the country.)

The Far West has always been a good place for a girl who wants to marry.  The men who explored and eventually settled it wanted wives, and families, but it was a tough sell.  When women did show up they were treated well, and the culture of the West has always been partial to the fair sex.  At least, that’s the way I see it.

And, of course, it stretches all the way back to the founding of this country in Virginia.  When the Jamestown survivors finally figured out how to make a living, by growing tobacco, the colony started to modestly prosper.  But wives were needed, and the first boat load of them arrived, around two hundred strong,  in about 1619.  They were young and healthy women recruited for the task in urban England, mainly, and upon arrival they were all immediately paired up and married off.  The women who undertook that adventure are among the Founding Mothers of America, and many of us are descended from them.  The men who came here first always understood that you can’t have a society without women, and it’s best to treat them right if you expect them to come to the New World.  At least if they’re English women, who were as liberated as much as any woman in the 17th century was.

Because these women were English, they created a society that was based on the Absolute Nuclear Family, which the ancient English had adopted from their Anglo-Saxon invaders.  This meant that every woman was free to choose.  And when she chose a husband, he was expected to carve out a living for their family, and acquire a homestead apart from his parents or hers.  And when they had children of their own none of them were automatically entitled to anything from their parents.  They might, or might not, inherit.  These were large families back then, and the younger boys were on their own.  This is why early Americans were always land hungry.  Every new generation needed more land.  You could say that the tipping point in favor of the American Revolution was the British determination to prevent the Americans from spreading West, into lands reserved for the Indians.  George Washington personally “owned” vast land tracts in the west, and he didn’t want to give them up.

Because of the Founder’s Effect, the attitudes of the first settlers of this country became the basis for our American culture.  The Absolute Nuclear Family is the American family.  And women have always been held in high regard by actual American men.

I think Trump has always objectified women, and it’s one source of my dislike of him.  When he was younger his motto with women was “Treat ’em like s—.”  He apparently was a serial adulterer, and liked to brag about the well known married women he slept with.  Oh, and if you aren’t a super model, you aren’t up to the Donald’s standards.   Add it all up, and it’s no wonder he’s got a problem with women voters.  They can see right through him.

Women will save us from Trump.

Strange things have happened at American political party conventions.  A revolt against Trump in Cleveland would hearken back to history.  It’s unlikely, but virtually everything associated with Trump has been unlikely til now, so who the hell knows?  If he continues stepping in it, and sinks further in the polls, anything is possible.  Putting thousands of political activists together at a convention, from every corner of the country, and strangers to one another, creates a combustible condition.

The  Cleveland Rebellion lacks one critical element, a white knight.  But in our history such knights have emerged from the chaos of a convention itself. In 1880 James Garfield of Ohio gave the nominating speech for John Sherman.  Garfield had absolutely no interest in the job himself.  James Blaine, Roscoe Conkling and even former President Grant were all serious contenders.  But Garfield was the best man among them, and everyone in the hall knew it.  So in spite of his sincere resistance, he got a few votes in the opening ballots.  As the balloting continued, and gridlock reigned, on the 35th ballot he picked up 50 votes, and won a majority on the 36th.  Garfield was a great man, and would have been a great President, but died from medical malpractice after being shot.  The man who killed him was his physician,  Dr. Bliss, an ignorant man who ignored Lister and the threat of infection.

Trump lacks discipline.  It’s his nature.  He has tremendous will power, and high intelligence, but no discipline.  He’s achieved as much as he dreamed he would, and more.  And he’s done it all without discipline.  It’s not a quality that a 70 year old man acquires easily.  In some ways, he disdains discipline, as a quality that truly strong men can do without.  And in some ways discipline is subjection to authority.  Authoritarian men, like Trump, respect no authority  but their own.  Paul Manafort has as much chance of instilling discipline in Donald Trump as Tinker Bell does.

Trump’s authoritarianism could be his undoing.  It goes against the grain in this country, at least the part where I live, the Far West.  There’s the story of the British visitor to a western ranch, who asked a cowboy where he might find his master.  To which the cowboy replied, “That sumbitch hasn’t been born.”  There’s a lot of anti-authority in the Far West.  In fact, the more you think about it, Trump is the opposite of the archetype of the Far West, the cowboy.  You can’t see Trump on a horse, with a cowboy hat, being a bad ass cowboy.  That’s not him.

There used to be a theory that most Americans don’t really pay too much attention to politics until the Conventions.  So polls right now are not predictive.  I go to 538.com to see what they’ve got to say on the polls, which is nothing.  It’s really too early.  What counts between now and the election is execution, on a daily basis.  It’s Presidential Politics 101.  Trump doesn’t really believe in much of it, and it’s going to cost him.  The press has formed a united front against him, with the WaPo taking the lead.  Old Bernstein has got some young reporters there thinking they can win a Pulitzer by taking down Trump.  And they’re going to try, with the blessing of their employer, Jeff Bezos.

Babbie and I are taking our granddaughter to an A’s game tomorrow.  I think they’re the worst team in the league.  But, what the hell, it’s baseball.

Turmoil in America is nothing new.  I like the parallels with 1920, which ended in the greatest political landslide in the history of contested Presidential elections, and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties.

Wilson’s Attorney General, Palmer, thought we were menaced by Bolshies, as they were called, and after having two separate bombing attacks on his home, initiated the Palmer Raids.  He arrested 6-10,000 people, and discovered three pistols, but no bombs.  He did manage to deport around 750 of the trouble makers, though.  But then on September 16, 1920 a bomb went off in front of J. P. Morgan’s bank on Wall Street, killing 38 and injuring hundreds more.  It stood as the worst terror attack in our history until Oklahoma City.

This was believed to be the work of Italian anarchists, just as the assassination of McKinley had been the work of a Polish anarchist.  1920 was the year of Sacco and Venzetti, and Ponzi, of Prohibition, and women’s suffrage, and 3,600 strikes by organized labor.  Harding’s phrase, “a return to normalcy”, had a lot of appeal.

2016 isn’t 1920.  This year in politics stands alone, and I defy anyone to tell me with assurance they know how it will all turn out.  Maybe it’s just a prelude to 2020, when history will repeat itself after 100 years.

I was all set to celebrate Father’s Day when I made the mistake of watching a snippet of Meet the Press.  Chuck Todd announced that he believes the gay community in America is about to join forces with the gun control movement.  With these reinforcements, and under the leadership of Hillary Clinton, the NRA may at last be defeated.

This naturally depressed me, a life member.  The Gun Gestapo is going gay, and every friend of the Second Amendment, is forewarned.

We’re already forearmed.

One sentiment that annoys me more than most is political purity.  I’ve seen it on the internet from pro-lifers who refuse to support Gary Johnson because he’s pro-choice.  These people need to get off their high horse and realize the situation we find ourselves in.  It’s dire.  Clinton would be four more years of Obama, with a little corruption thrown in.  It might be better with Trump, but it might not.  With this guy, you never know.  Do we really want to hand the keys over to this sixteen year old with a six pack?

Orlando was right in his wheel house, but he blew it by patting himself on the back for being right.  The only way to explain such stupidity by a man who is not stupid is by reference to his ego.  It’s never satisfied, it must be constantly fed.  That’s why the rallies are so important to him, and why he can’t let them go.  These rallies are just a giant ego trip for Donald J. Trump, American strongman, worshiped by millions of adoring fans.  And his fans want entertainment, and he knows how to deliver.  He can’t be Presidential, he has be an entertainer.  He won’t let it go, it’s like an intoxicant.  The adoration of the crowd can be addicting.

Johnson will appoint another Clarence Thomas to the bench, if he has any intelligent libertarian lawyers advising him.  Scalia was a great conservative.  Thomas is even  better, a libertarian.  And if Johnson gets another vacancy he could appoint a second Justice, whose vote could overturn Roe v. Wade, the goal of the pro-life movement for 40 years.   As President, all of Johnson’s judicial appointments would be from the Federalist Society, or close to it.  Aside from those appointments, there is nothing Johnson would do which would affect the pro-life cause.  Don’t worry about federal funding for abortion.  Johnson doesn’t  believe in federal funding for damn near anything.

Libertarians such as myself have supported people like Ted Cruz even though he’s much more conservative on social issues.  That’s just politics.  You don’t get a whole loaf.  Now we’re asking social conservatives to return the favor.  Considering the alternatives, it’s not too much to ask.

I think Trump is an American Jean-Marie LePen.  LePen never won the big prize.  He’s an old nut, and called the Holocaust a “detail of history.”  So his much more intelligent daughter, Marine, kicked him out of his own party, which she now leads.  I hope she becomes President of France.  I am a very big fan of Marine LePen.  If Brexit passes, there may be a chain reaction of nationalism across Europe, which just might do it for her.  Here’s hoping.

And, of course, the Donald has his very own Marine LePen in his daughter Ivanka.  This is the kind of woman who could do pretty much anything she wanted to.  I hope, for her sake, it doesn’t include politics.  She looks like too much of a mother.

This country feels like it’s coming apart.  Something’s got to give.  It’s like you know an earthquake is coming.  All you can do is wait.  After it’s over, my gut tells me that the Center will have less power than it has today.  Sanders was an attack on the Center.  Cruz and Trump are both attacks on the Center.  And Gary Johnson hates the Center most of all.

The Center will not hold.  It must federalize.