A Plan for Restoring American Democracy

From an Englishman, John Arcto

I have been commenting on substack posts and notes about how Washington DC is the single greatest threat to America. I’m sure I have said it here a time or two. No one has yet told me I am wrong about that.

Assuming that is true, what do we do about that? I have often said too, I would be happy with about a 90% reduction in the Federal government.

Fabius Minarchus

reminded me, well, about half of government spending is social security and medicare. Ninety percent sounds good until you realize how many people are truly, mortally dependent on the Feds. I would still be happy to do away with Health and Human Services, the Dept of InJustice, Homeland Security, Dept of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Dept of Agriculture, in short, every institution that has gone pathological, enacting the opposite of it’s charge. But I am not optimistic about that, as I don’t think Trump is very serious about real change.

Is there a tangible thing can be done to push the Republican party in that direction? The clearest argument I have heard recently comes from John Arcto, an Englishman, who is all of 23 years of age I think.

The GOP Should Become the 'Party of States' Rights'

It is humbling reading John, who knows more about the history of American governance and jurisprudence than the vast majority of Americans, myself included. But I found myself engrossed by this piece, not realizing how hungry I am for any tangible solution for weakening the technocratic managerial deep state.

Tenth Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Earl Warren court, from 1953-1969, took a very liberal, “living document” view of the Constitution, vastly expanding the scope of the Federal government. The “originalist” view is held even now by the liberals on the court (to a degree), the Roberts court recognizing the limits of judicial activism. Even the liberal saint Ruth Bader-Ginsburg (though less so now after not retiring during the Obama presidency) believed Roe v Wade was built on a misreading, expansionist view of the Constitution. The distinction matters, between the living document and the originalist view. The 10th Amendment specifically limits the scope of the federal government, while the living document view can expand the central power indefinitely.

Liberals know how difficult it is to justify the power of the Supreme Court to make up the law like the Warren Court did, so can only point to its ‘good effects’, i.e., outcomes they agree with.

Of course, the constitution is not a sacred document, and such a notion is quite silly. It was a ‘messy compromise’ between numerous different ideologies and interests; slave states and free states, Federalists and anti-Federalists. The contradictory clauses represent the fact that there was no ‘View of the Founding Fathers’, but that the Founding Fathers had many different views and needed to reach a compromise. The best thing about the American founders is that they realised they weren’t perfect, and so created the procedure of the constitutional amendment, the first of its kind in the world.

However, the American constitution was never ratified with the understanding that the federal government would become so large and with so much responsibility, though Alexander Hamilton might have wished it. The system of checks and balances is built towards gridlock when dealing with a vast continental Empire and administrative state, which renders it extremely vulnerable to capture by special interests, for instance, the ease by which pharmaceutical lobbies can bribe just a few Senators to obstruct the lowering of drug prices.

The Tenth Amendment is most important in this regard. The living document perspective effectively ignores the 10th, interpreting the Constitution to fit modern perspectives. Many of the founders were deeply concerned about the centralization of power, believing states rights to be a bulwark against that. The living document perspective effectively negates states rights, subordinating the states to the Feds.

The 10th Amendment is explicitly designed to stop the unaccountable transfer of power away from the states towards the federal government. The path to a more functional political system in the US is to decentralise as much to the state level as possible. Allow California to decide what’s best for California and Florida to decide what’s best for Florida.

State constitutions are also far less ‘sacred’, and far easier to amend, replace, and institute far-reaching policies through. The size of the federal government, its tax burden and regulation, reduces the possibility for policymaking on the state level in accordance with that state’s preferences.

A major flaw with the constitution, something Alexander Hamilton was in large part responsible for, was that it allowed an unchecked growth of the federal government through the expansive jurisdiction of Supreme Court. The worst offenders are those subscribing to the ‘Living Constitution’, like the court of Earl Warren, that relentlessly abused vague clauses in the constitution to expand federal government power and impose their own ideological preferences.

There are some fundamental barriers to the expansion of state’s rights. First, a kind of fundamentalism about “natural rights.” John takes the view that there is no such thing as a natural right, that right are always derived from social consensus. The natural rights argument stems from some of the language of the Declaration of Independence (and Christianity). This tends to benefit the left, the liberal view constantly expanding the definition of a natural right. This tends then to support the idea that those rights need to be protected and defended by an increasingly powerful federal government.

A major barrier to this view is the ‘rights-fundamentalism’ that defines American politics in the modern age, both on the left and right. Neither the American left or right recognise the fact that rights are determined by societal consensus, and always involve trade-offs, dependent also on obligation and duty.

Each side thinks that their interpretation of ‘rights’ are ‘not up for debate’. This is demonstrated most notably on the left, but also on the right when it comes to topics like guns and abortion, and is a key contributing factor in American political polarisation.

The second barrier has to do with race.

The very term ‘States Rights’ is slandered as a dog whistle for racism, due to the fact that it was employed by southern segregationists. This has meant that court overreach can’t be criticised on its own terms, it has to be on a case by case basis, based on the issue, like specifically on the issue of Roe and abortion. Nobody in the Federalist Society today questions Brown vs Board (1954) or Loving vs Virginia (1967), even though they were the start of so many instances of judicial tyranny.

The mythologisation around the Civil Rights Movement is the core barrier to right-wing politics being intellectually coherent in a way that may attract those of above-average IQ. If you accept that movement was completely heroic, and take Martin Luther King’s words as gospel, the only logical conclusion is Wokeness.

Does this mean that we have to deny that the treatment of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South was appalling? No.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and subsequent Civil Rights legislation) vastly expanded the power of the feds. That might have seemed necessary at the time, but this is essentially being used to defend the right of men to play women’s sports, use women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, and is the foundation of proposed hate speech legislation that would criminalize speech that marginalized or “oppressed” groups find offensive, resulting currently in censorship and de-platforming/canceling, but foreshadowed by recent legislation enacted or proposed in Ireland, Scotland and Canada, criminalizing in the extreme, even unto life imprisonment, highly arbitray and subjective “hate” speech. It is the foundation of the argument that children can decide to take drugs and have surgeries that will sterilize and disfigure them, in the name of gender therapy. It is the foundation of DIE initiatives causing the competency crisis.

Ironically, it was Jim Crow laws that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent, that is now used to sterilize mostly white children.

This lack of state-level democracy enhanced the legitimacy of both federal government and the judicial activism of the Warren Court, as by allowing southern states to completely ignore the 15th Amendment in cases like Giles v. Harris (1903), the Supreme Court of the first half of the 20th century had proven itself to also be activist.

But this is why the GOP should champion major democratic reform, including direct democracy initiatives, on the state level.

As mentioned, the state-level gives one vastly more room for experimentation and innovation than on the federal level. There is also the power of citizens initiative in the majority of states, which gives the people true sovereignty over the laws that govern them.

Many liberals would point to the aftermath of the end of Roe v Wade, where many states have outlawed abortion outright, as a reason to have a powerful centralized government to assure rights. Many of those liberals however, have decided that abortion should be on-demand, for any reason, at any stage of the pregnancy, even immediately after birth, and this Administration would pass such a law for the whole country if it could, despite that a large majority of Americans are against such. Trump recently said he is on the side of state’s rights in that regard, and I agree. That said, in my own state of Minnesota, after 2022, Dems with triumvirate control of the state government, basically went full eugenicist: the first two things they did was make Minnesota a trans refuge state, and legalizing abortion on-demand, for any reason at any time even immediately after birth. Now they are talking about making Minnesota an immigrant refuge state, though they are wary as it is an election year.

It is easier to change legislation at the state level than when the Federal Government makes a law or refuses to.

Reparations

John also discusses Walt Bismark’s proposal for reparations, as a kind of salve for race relations. Most people naturally revolt against the idea of reparations for African Americans for slavery, as no one living is responsible for black people’s ancestors in chains. Bismark’s idea is reparations as a compromise.

I also have become increasingly interested in Walt Bismarck’s ‘The Pro-White Case for Reparations’ as a ‘final absolution’ to the problem.

I opposed it when I first read it. But the more I think about it, the more I think Walt’s proposal is a work of genius; a way that completely dismantling the Civil Rights Regime (aka, legal Wokeness) can be made politically palatable.

As Walt says, by endorsing reparations, you ‘buy credibility points’ to be able to go far to the right on racial issues in other measures, supporting HBD and repealing all Civil Rights Law after 1965 (and Title II and Title VII of 1964).

A reparation’s programme should be based on the original mistake of not providing ‘40 Acres and a Mule’ to freed slaves, with the amount being what ‘40 Acres and a Mule’ would be worth in today’s money.

I have always been mystified by the idea of reparations, but I can see wisdom here if it allows for dismantling a lot of federal power. Black people would no longer have the power to shame white people, and (mostly liberal) white people could be made free of the guilt they are forced to display to get along in institutions.

All affirmative action, disparate impact, ability to launch discrimination lawsuits, and all federal collection of data about race should end. Title II and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act should be repealed, though the rest, dealing with ending legal segregation in the South, should stay.

One may still think that they’ve already got extensive reparations through civil rights law, and I agree with that. However the fact it is not a monetary sum, but hidden laws and hiring practices, means that what Whites have done to uplift Blacks is less visible to Whites, and they are able to keep being manipulated by Black cries of racism.

Blacks also rely on the leverage they have over the fact that they never got formal reparations, to keep the civil rights regime going, a point Bernie Sanders made on why he opposed it: it would justify the right not caring about things like Disparate Impact.

Taking the reparations each individual would be forced to sign a ‘Declaration of Absolution and Reconciliation’, thereafter unable to claim oppression. Some people would use this money to start businesses, some for better housing in a better neighborhood, some would blow it on consumables. But the argument of systemic racism would be broken. Though to be sure, there is also the tendency of some for whom no amount would ever be enough, and once given money they will only want more. There would also be demands for reparations surely, from indigenous Americans. No doubt it would not be much appreciated by poor and working class white Americans, who quite frankly, neither Arcto and especially Walt Bismark think very highly of. That said, this is the first time I have ever heard a logical, tangible argument for reparations.

In Conclusion

John’s article is long and very broad, so I will not summarize all of it here. I recommend it however, as a fine resource for thinking creatively about how to weaken the Federal government.

John does argue we should admire Malcolm X and the black self-sufficiency he argued for, rather than the Marxist, not particularly forthright, not precisely moral Martin Luther King.

Because John is so expansive in his declarations, every reader is likely to find something objectionable. Personally I object to his framing of the eugenics of abortion as a net positive. I also objected in a comment he made about fake meat (after I praised the article): “Support GMO foods and artificial meat, and resist the ‘stupid right’s’ banning attempts.”

The one thing I disagreed with fundamentally was the fake meat bit. Ecologically, animals are fundamental to soil health and vegetable yields, and a key whole food. If you believe in a return to the local and the Jeffersonian view, you should believe in re-localized agriculture. Whole foods are essential to human health, and should be key to the health of local ecosystems. Greater local health would make for a healthier polity. Fake meat is for Hamiltonians to keep the rabble weak. People don't want it anyway.

He discusses at length the distinction at the founding between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian perspectives. Jefferson and Hamilton were bitter enemies, Jefferson who preferred states rights to federal, a nation of independent land owners, while Hamilton preferred an effectively all-powerful central government. It should be no surprise liberals have made a kind of secular saint of Hamilton, who hated the rabble, while they have utterly demonized and cancelled Jefferson, who’s ideal was a nation of decentralized Yoeman farmers (freeholders) as an enduring foundation for the Republic.

But the future is more Jeffersonian, even if Hamiltonian Federalism carried the modern era particularly since industrialization and the Civil War. The future is decentralization, as the Federal state becomes ever more dysfunctional. DIE initiatives will be the death of Institutions at every level. Complex systems cannot be sustained by an increasingly incompetent DIE technocracy. States need to become incubators of democracy again, as they were originally intended, and conservatives need to start building parallel, local institutions to support civil society and the American experiment.

I very much appreciated this article from John Arcto, because it is about building a more coherent conservative worldview. So much of the right critique of the left is merely reactionary, of little consequence other than the satisfaction of highlighting madness. Despite the madness, the right has been no bulwark against liberal “progress”.

Let the woke destroy pathological institutions. Help them if you can. What is woke will be destroyed in the process. We need to be prepared for that, and John Arcto’s argument for Republicans becoming the party of state’s rights is very useful in that regard.