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Three Signs that the American Polity is in Trouble

Three Signs that the American Polity is in Trouble

Last updated on: May 3, 2016 at 9:29 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Three Signs that the American Polity is in Trouble 2016-05-03T09:29:58-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Who will replace him?

No nation lasts forever. The United States of America nearly fell apart in the Civil War and faced stresses early in the Industrial Age that destroyed other nations (such as Russia), but which we survived.

We should not take our stability for granted. I have pointed out many times that the order created by the World War II generation is over . . . for good and bad. Global organizations built after the War have outlived their usefulness and in many cases impede peace and our national sovereignty.

Change is coming and change can be good . . . but it can also be dangerous.

In studying regimes that do not make it, I have found three qualities that they all share.

The ruling class no longer believes the founding story.

Outside of the martyred Tsar, it is difficult to find many of the ruling elite in Russia who still believed in Holy Mother Russia. The founding “myth” of Russia was mocked in the early twentieth century. To this day, the Russian state has yet to recapture a coherent vision of what it is to be Russian.

In the same way, both Democrats and Republicans seem essentially hostile to the Constitutional order and to the “founding story” of America. What is America? What is it when a man says he is American? President Obama attempted to modify this story for modernity, but his retelling failed to capture either the left of his own party or the center-right.

The intellectual class is hostile to the traditional values of the nation.

Needless to say, there is a gulf between the workers who send their children to college and the professors who teach in college. Large numbers of Americans are traditionalists, but few American intellectuals are. Most Americans are Christians, but few of our intellectual class is Christian in any meaningful sense.

There is a growing gap between the educators and the majority on issues of what it is to be human. Many Americans, on the left and the right, are alienated by the campus climate.

The working class and middle class feel powerless.

This is the fatal flaw to any republic. The last financial crisis rightly left many of us on the right and the left feeling that the system is rigged. It may not be as rigged as we think, we are still one of the freest nations in history, but the feeling exists.

Partly it exists because the American people have engaged in widespread social experiments without thinking through the results. We have given an entire generation access to pornography, for example. What are the results? We don’t know, but we will find out. Have we become decadent or so narcissistic that we feel powerless even when we are the most privileged people on the planet?

We shall see. There is still much to celebrate in America, but we are in a time of change and the good may be lost if what is “going wrong” or even the perception we are going wrong overwhelms social structures.

What happens when the social structures fail and people feel politically powerless?

The result is generally the rise of nihilism, conspiracy theories, simplistic solutions, and demagogues. The nihilist is the cynic who believes the system is so corrupt anything is better than the alternative. They kill Nicholas and end up with Stalin.

Conspiracy theories are elaborate attempts to make sense of decline and powerlessness. You can be sure that in most situations, anti-Semitism will rise as Jewish people are nearly always the ultimate target of conspiracy thinking on both the left and the right. Conspiracy theories appeal to a certain type of intellectual who sees his or her nation slipping into decline. Smart people love explanations.

Many of us become attracted to simple one size fits all solutions: free coinage of silver, a single land tax, or getting rid of the Fed.

The solution to such a situation is to avoid people who peddle solutions. Return to first principles and focus on local issues. Refuse to vote for demagogues or nihilists. Double down on community involvement and reward leaders who may not have “all the answers,” but show kindness and mercy. In an unstable situation, kindness is the first value to fade. Refuse to lose friends over politics or ideological differences. Draw as wide a social circle as possible.

Unstable times cry out for big changes, but incremental changes, the sort made by a Theodore Roosevelt or a Benjamin Disraeli, are best. We need to save what can be saved of the old order, conservatism, and a progressive vision for the next century. Most of all, we need to avoid the siren song of demagogues. Remember that the sirens of mythology sounded beautiful, but like all revolutionaries, they consumed those attracted to their song.

The good news is that regime change (revolution) usually needs some external crisis (World War I in Russia) and we lack any strong foes. Global Islam is a more distant threat, though the same cannot be said of our Western European allies who have worse internal problems and a potent “outside” threat from radical Islam.

I would bet that America will muddle through as we usually do, but now is a time for caution, moderation, and a refusal to shout out the sweet voice of reason.

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