Intellectual Secession: The post-liberals' Republic of Vandalism
Monday Memo 4/20, AD2026
Sorry this is coming late, students had questions after class; good questions though! Welcome to my new subscribers. On Mondays I reflect on ideas and events from history that I think still have value for today.
If anything defines the American political identity it is the Declaration of Independence and the war that enforced it. The ups and downs, vices, and virtues, and contradictions of the Revolutionary period established America’s unique cultural outlook. It defined parameters of the American civic tradition.
Earlier this year I wrote two essays that I keep thinking about. The first was about the need to end wishcasting1 and the second was that America is no longer an experiment and Americans need to recover their confidence.2
There are many things that were wrong about American during the Founding era, however those things were not the Founding itself as an either an idea or deed. Surrendering the moral arguments of the Founding creed, because of the hypocrisy of the 18th-century is a mistake because it plays into the hands of the authoritarian and frankly anti-American impulses of the post-liberals.
Post-liberals argue that the principles of 1776—specifically individual autonomy and the 18th-century Enlightenment-influenced idea of natural rights—are fundamentally flawed. They contend that by making the “unencumbered” individual the primary unit of society, the Founders stripped away the “thick” communal and religious ties that are necessary for human flourishing.
In response to these developments, I think Americans need to be bolder about confronting to what is in fact an anti-American philosophy.
In reality, the Founders did no such thing as sowing the seeds of social unraveling. Second, the post-liberal assertions mirror the complaint that the rebel slavocracy of the “confederacy” made about individual equality resting on wrong premises, that were a weak foundation for a society.
To make this comparison plain, I will quote the middle of the “Cornerstone Speech” by the rebel vice-president, Alexander Stephens. Earlier in his March 21, 1861, speech, Stephens argued that the rebel constitution was a refined evolution of the American system. He claimed it kept what the rebels thought were essential liberties while fixing perceived structural failures regarding tariffs and federal spending. He presented this new framework as a “decidedly better” regime than the original 1787 settlement. However, he then switched to expounding on the philosophy behind secession and the rebel movement, picking a fight with Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers in general. I have put some phrases in bold for emphasis.
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically… This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
He continued…
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago… One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States…announce in the House of Representatives…that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics….That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail…They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal…
—Alexanders Stephens, rebel vice president.
To Stephens, the Founders were on the “wrong side of history” and to the anti-slavery Unionists, the Founders were on the “right side of history.” These viewpoints were incompatible. The reason I have quoted this to emphasize—as Frederick Douglass did— that the principles of the liberal Founding were good and in contradiction to the oppression of the day. Alexander Stephens recognized this; he had to reject the principles of the Founding Fathers regarding liberty and rights. The post-liberals are not proponents of the slavery system of the 1861 rebellion. However, like the rebels, they recognize that their project is in actual conflict with the principles of the American nation. By claiming that the founding principles of American liberalism are fundamentally wrong, the 21st century’s “new right” has placed itself outside the American tradition and adopted a mindset of intellectual secession. To rebuild the American house on a foundation rejected by Founding Fathers, they have shown themselves willing to tolerate the political vandalism of the republic. It is time to evict them.
