The Ruminant of Infinity

"The unplannedness of the discovery of letting innovation bloom is really, really important."

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Spurred by Robert Kagan’s new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart–Again, and Thursday’s Remnant, Jonah spends the majority of this interminable episode responding to Kagan’s critique of conservatism, from contextualizing William F. Buckley’s role on the right to recounting the left’s history of intellectual anti-liberalism. Also, kudos to the frat bros who saved the American flag.

Show Notes:
—Jonah’s Wednesday G-File
—“Metabolic rift” wiki page
—King-Slutzky answers questions
—Gee Officer Krupke

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Comments (91)
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  1. Deleted Comment

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    Paul Montagu

    One, don’t let Isgur get in your head. She’s just jealous of your skill set. :)
    Two, I’m glad you had an extended postscript on Kagan, because it helped me get perspective on the ant-liberal side of things on the Left.

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    Clint

    The poor soul who Jonah says challenges himself to run for the full length of the Ruminant has a rough time this week....

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    The Bell Tower

    Gotta check out Kagan’s book and the podcast but originalism, just like democracy, is much more a mechanism rather than a philosophy. In both examples, they can be used to both liberal and anti-liberal ends even though I would argue that both are liberal tools.

    Democracy as manifested in the post civil war south, for example, was not kind to black folks. People’s minds had to be changed.

    The greatness of Jackie Robinson was the power of his persuasion. He changed minds and hearts through the disciplined force of his character and abilities. I still marvel at a man who could play not just baseball but Hall of Fame caliber baseball without any violence in the face of profound resistance. This is the opposite of force.

    Originalism as simply a strict construction of the words written down as law can go many directions and can be used by both sides of the anti-liberal spectrum. See both civil rights and abortion for examples. Plessy v Ferguson was once the law of the land. So was Roe v Wade. In both examples, defenders of the ruling wanted to lean on settled law and strict construction.

    Anti-federalism helped birth what the south called states’ rights but it also birthed the Bill of Rights and if you think all anti-Federalists were pro-slavery (as some like AOC have eluded to), I’d suggest a closer read of your history.

    Jefferson moved towards this version of anti-Federalism as he aged but Melancton Smith was both one of the chief anti-Federalist voices of the period and a founder of the New York Manumission Society.

    Really, what is liberalism in the American context beyond using the moderate powers of the constitution to achieve your desired ends? It is the rejection of these mechanisms in favor of seized power and force that is anti-liberal.

    Consensus through persuasion is the guiding light and all mechanisms from elections to Supreme Court rulings are manifestations of this view of democratic republicanism. Clarence Thomas made it to the court through consensus and democracy just like Ketanji Jackson.

    Both extremes in this country have the germ of anti-liberalism and indeed more than the germ in 2024. Impatience with elections and supreme court rulings are examples of this and you can find it with both progressives and MAGA.

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    Gibby

    Jonah had an experience about this issue (being interviewed by someone who hadn't read his book) with cenk Uygur way back in the liberal fascism days. It's on youtube

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    Ian Fillmore

    I think there is real confusion about what civil disobedience is and is not.

    Suppose there is a law that I believe to be unjust. In fact, it is so unjust and morally offensive to me that I cannot in good conscience obey it. So I deliberately disobey the unjust law and force the authorities to jail me. This is civil disobedience. Notice that being arrested and going to jail is a central feature of the protest. The goal is to bring public awareness to an unjust law by forcing the government to (very publicly) enforce that law. The idea is that the double injustice of being jailed for refusing to follow an unjust law will rally public support for changing the law.

    This is quite different from protesting in favor of X and, while doing so, breaking laws A, B, and C when A, B, and C are all reasonable and just laws. This is NOT civil disobedience. It's just... law breaking. The righteousness of X does not give you a free pass to break other laws. If the protesters at Columbia believed that bans on camping in the quad were unjust and immoral, then deliberately camping in the quad (and peacefully being arrested for it) would count as civil disobedience. But that's not what's happening. Rather, their claim is that the cause of the Palestinians is so righteous that they are entitled to camp in the quad to raise awareness. Sorry, that's not how it works.

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    Kenton A. Hoover

    I don’t think Kagan has connected everything with a straight-line. He has connected it all in a string board.

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      Aylene Wright

      Ah. As in the Pepe Silvia / Charlie Day meme?

      https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-pepe-silvia-the-iconic-always-sunny-and-charlie-day-conspiracy-meme-explained

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  8. Charvondersaar56

    Dude, I'm cornfused: how is doing a solo pod any more indicative of being challenged on the mental health front than writing a solo column or blog? Keep doing it, please. The occasional meandering and rabbit hole diving are easily forgiven as you flesh out ideas for future pieces or clarify past works. And...just write the damn book!

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    Ben Connelly

    Does Kagan actually know anyone who romanticizes the Old South or the Confederacy? Did he grow up in a part of the South where nostalgia for Lee and Jackson is still strong?

    I did. His “straight-line” is baseless. I knew people who loved the confederate flag, swore that the South will rise again, used racial slurs, etc. They were NOT Reaganites. They couldn’t have told you what National Review was and didn’t know WF Buckley Jr. from Adam. Some of them were Republicans. Some were Democrats. Some were nonvoters or disaffected third party (Reform or whatever) types. Many voted for Obama. A lot didn’t like McCain or Romney or Bush but probably voted for them anyway. Many of them did NOT love conservatives or the conservative movement, which they saw as an elite group that hated poor people and wanted to cut taxes on the rich etc. but they may have voted Republican because the Democrats raised their taxes and they didn’t like hippies.

    Does Kagan know many rural voters who supported Trump? Has he ever lived in a rural part of the country?

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      George.Skinner

      I thought a lot of disagreement came down to different definitions of what constituted conservatism. Jonah's pretty thoroughly articulated his perspective as a Chestertonian philosophy connected with small-L classical liberalism. However, another common definition of conservative is "tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" (Merriam-Webster.) You can characterize anybody resisting change as conservative under that definition, and it's one of the definitional problems that allows progressives to convince themselves they must always have been on the correct side of history. Used in that fashion, the label conservative tends to become a mere pejorative. Conservatives being conservative, however, they haven't followed the political left in re-branding themselves every few decades when the label becomes toxic due to accumulated baggage.

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        Aylene Wright

        Yeah it makes them say insipid things like "not all conservatives are racist, but all racists are conservative". Or even "not all Republicans are racist, but all racists are Republicans".

        I still recall a left leaning school friend of mine being absolutely flabbergasted, a couple decades ago, to watch a civil rights documentary, and find it quoting Robert Byrd saying something that was not, in the lingo of the day, politically correct.

        I almost said "uh, you know he was in the KKK, right?" But this was before you could tell people to look stuff up on Wikipedia or Google, and I doubted he'd believe me, so I didn't.

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    The Bell Tower

    When Roosevelt (pictured) was still alive and I would leave town for business trips, I used to warn my wife: “Don’t eat the dog while I’m gone.” She was born and raised in Shanghai for context.

    Don’t worry, she gives it back to me much worse most of the time. However, the Chinese culturally do not view dogs the way we do in America. This is not confined to Chinese either as I’ve learned over the years.

    Roosevelt was a member of the family to me. He could sleep where he wanted, sit where he wanted, I’d take him on trips and vacations, etc. I loved that damn dog just like he was a person. For all intents and purposes, he was a person to me.

    My wife was not the same and is not the same about pets in general. That doesn’t make her a bad person or mean that she’s a cold or uncaring individual. Consider that while Americans were enthralled with Beatlemania, the Chinese were just emerging from a famine where the trees in many villages were stripped of all their bark because that was all people there had to eat.

    That has a cultural impact even in the cities on generations that did not necessarily live through it. I find this all very fascinating.

    I’m not trying to defend Noem in any way. She’s long past deserving any benefit of the doubt, she described it in horrific and unfeeling terms and she’s defended herself even worse.

    But I have to wonder how much of her attitude is influenced by where, when and how she grew up. Thats an explanation, not an excuse and it’s one I’m constantly interested in.

    I think it was the Tommyknockers where Stephen King included a female character who was described as sort of tough as nails city manager in a small town living in a chauvinistic world.

    In one scene, there is a dog who is a menace intimidating and biting people and she has it put down without the owner’s consent. The owner is an old, white, drunk jerk as I recall.

    King’s narrative made her decision almost heroic and the locals approved - at least the ones we are supposed to feel sympathetic towards. I found this troubling and puzzling when I read it. I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to empathize and even approve of that part of the story.

    But we live in a time and a place of unprecedented plenty even compared to the late 80’s when that book came out. Moderation, manners, even certain kinds of love are luxuries afforded to the people living here and now. That’s a perspective we spend far too little time considering.

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