The Jaffa School offers an interpretation of American history that can be described as the Beginning, the Consummation, and the Corruption. Its Great Perfectionist was Lincoln, who restored his founder’s promise by completely instituting the totalitarianism of “all men are equal” in the Declaration of Independence. Its antagonists were John C. Calhoun and the early 20th-century progressives, the former defending slavery and inequality, the latter replacing a constitutional republic with an executive state. bureaucracy itself, and both embody the philosophical and moral relativism that Jaffa despises (and that, as his intellectual feuds multiply, he also claims to enlighten many conservatives. his colleagues).
But one thing you notice around the Claremonts is that although they clearly care about the good and the bad of every US regime change, from the original founding (great) to the Lincolnian re-establishment (even) better will) to the progressive reconstruction of the achievements of Woodrow Wilson (their great villain, “Lost Cause” sympathizer turned arrogant technocrat) and Franklin Roosevelt, they also only practiced interest in the idea establishes itself, when moments of crisis bring new orders from old ones.
At one point, in pausing from reading the founding texts, we were treated to a screening of “The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance,” John Ford The Great West, whose theme was the transformation of The Ancient West into political modernity, moving from the rule of the gun (played by John Wayne’s Tom Doniphon) to the rule of the law (played by Jimmy Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard).
In the film, the transition couldn’t have happened without a mix of violence and deception. Lee Marvin’s outlaw, Valance, challenges peace attorney Stoddard to a duel; Doniphon saves the lawyer by shooting the outlaw from the shadows – and then the murder is attributed to Stewart’s character, who is despised and becomes a great statesman of the New West while cowboy and his security code retreat.
The not-so-subtle implication of Claremont’s reading of American history is that this kind of terrible transition did not happen once and for all; rather, it occurs cyclically in the life of any nation or society. Whenever change or crisis overwhelms a political order, a version of (in our case) the republic of the United States, you will have a period of instability and rough power politics. , until a new era or settlement is formed.
But it wouldn’t have happened without moments like Doniphon shooting Valance — or Lincoln suspending the habeas corporation, or Roosevelt threatening to encapsulate the Supreme Court — when norms and goodwill need to be suspended for good. of the new system waiting to be born.
As I try to understand what Eastman imagines he will do in serving Donald Trump even during a constitutional crisis, this is where I speculate. I do not think this is the necessary implication of Claremont’s thinking; indeed, you can find in the latest issue of The Claremont Review of Books an essay by William Voegeli criticizes conservatives for seeming “infatuated with chaos” and too eager to find back than to preserve. But I think it’s an understandable place to read Claremont on American history at a time when the American republic seems to be stiffening, deadlocked, deadlocked, and in need of some kind of conspicuous renewal.
