There's Something In The Air

Edmund Burke cast an indignant eye across the English Channel at the French Revolution and wrote sarcastically: “Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, they are forming plans for the good order of future society.”

Submitted for discussion: history has paraded past too many utopian dramas of transformation that ended by being as totalitarian, as murderous, as the regimes that were swept away. The relevance of the topic today stems from a very palpable sense there’s something in the air these six months before the national election.

We might start with the very general backdrop of at least four versions of America: Freedom America (Madisonian, Reagan conservative); Smart America (elitist, globalists); Real America (“you betcha,” rural, guns, religion); Just America (Woke, DEI) click: MM 7/12/21 Four Americas, seeming ready to rumble.

While January 6 was hardly a Bastille moment (discuss?), it may have served as a tickling reminder that there are limits when it comes to an electorate’s perception of a hi-jacked representative government – the expression by an otherwise-muted constituency to economic inequities, corruption of officials, and (yes) looming inflation.

Then we face the tear-it-down outbursts breaking out on campuses, whether spontaneous or orchestrated, though in search of some clear articulation. We spent a whole session trying to understand the mindset of certain millennial heirs as they aspired to “live their values” by getting rid of their money MM 12/14/20 The Rich Kids Who Want To Tear Down Capitalism. Remember they are part of a generation destined to inherit tens of trillions of dollars.

Closer to home, we at the club had been exposed to an extension of Boulder’s local Democratic Socialists of America’s SAFE (Safe Access For Everyone). Not that there’s anything wrong with that. That is, unless their “direct action” includes trespass on and physical destruction of property (here and a number of other Boulder premises), interference with a private event, and tagging their intrusion with a spray painted “A” MM 9/27/21 "A" Is For Anarchy.

In preparation for the session, spent hours reading on-line articles from the Jacobin Magazine (click: Jacobin Magazine) – named for the radical Jacobin faction, led by Robespierre and Saint-Just some centuries ago. Not a single article popped up coming close to undercut Burke’s cheeky observation. A free dessert to anyone can find an actual plan for the good order of future society in this “leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.”

While 2024 America’s upcoming summer of 2024 may be a far cry from late eighteenth century France, there is enough “energy” in the air for us to take heed of Benjamin Franklin’s answer to the question posed by Elizabeth Willing Powel, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a monarchy” to which Franklin answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”