Amerika

Republicans made themselves into “Christian libertarians” in order to get along with Leftists, effectively producing the groundwork for the uniparty. As part of this gesture, they praise Leftist ideals like equality while demanding a mere handful of libertarian and conservative notions like free markets.

These positions represent a retreat, not a forward step, which is why they are always styled in moral terms rather than practical ones. The secret to conservatism is that it works better than any other method, and ironically, produces as much of what Leftists want — except subsidies — as can be done in nature.

Many contemporary conservatives adopt cope-hope tropes that they hope seem bold enough to attract an audience. One of these is praise of Calvin Coolidge for doing nothing but reducing government, but this glosses over how Coolidge paired paleoconservative libertarianism with 1870s progressivism to continue the civil war legacy:

Coolidge was also a visionary who championed equal rights. Shortly after assuming office in 1923, he declared to Congress that the rights of African Americans were “as sacred as those of any other people” and that it was both a “public and private duty to safeguard those rights.”

He advocated for anti-lynching legislation but was blocked by congressional Democrats. Coolidge’s opposition to racism and prejudice saw millions leave the KKK, and the lynching of blacks decreased. His central piece of Civil Rights legislation was the granting of U.S. Citizenship to Native Americans living on reservations.

Civil rights replaced natural rights. The latter were designed to restrict government by making its ideological reach untenable, and were paired with a Naturalization Act that demanded only ethnic Western Europeans in the country. Civil rights make government all-powerful.

This means that all of the attempts by guys like Coolidge to restrict government size were merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but these polled well in the churches and boardrooms, so we got an LBJ-styled civil rights president masquerading as a reformer:

The 30th president, Republican Calvin Coolidge, was a major supporter of Howard University and an overlooked figure in advancing the cause of racial equality in the United States. In one of his earliest acts as president, Coolidge proposed and persuaded Congress to pass an appropriation bill that reinforced the unique relationship between Howard and the federal government.

Because of his great interest in supporting business, he then described the growth of businesses owned by African-Americans since emancipation from slavery. He emphasized business growth and the spread of literacy among blacks as paralleling developments in the nation at large. To the Howard graduates and to the entire country he then said:

“The nation has need of all that can be contributed to it through the best efforts of all its citizens. The colored people have repeatedly proved their devotion to the high ideals of our country. They gave their services in the war with the same patriotism and readiness that other citizens did …. The propaganda of prejudice and hatred which sought to keep the colored men from supporting the national cause completely failed. The black man showed himself the same kind of citizen, moved by the same kind of patriotism, as the white man. They were tempted, but not one betrayed his country…They came home with many decorations and their conduct repeatedly won high commendation from both American and European commanders.”

If you have not yet seen how important mono-ethnicism is, the above provides an object lesson: without mono-ethnicism, society makes accommodations for diversity, which must be forced through state power. Republicans following the Coolidge model are merely strengthening their enemies.

Tags: calvin coolidge, republicans