A German Europe?

A single question seems to recur throughout modern European history and it is known as “The German Question.”

Is it a black swan or a red herring? A white Horse, a blue moon, or yellow-bellied?

Whatever your answer, it appears to have arisen again in the present context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Or as Biden refers to it, a “minor incursion.”) Berlin once again finds itself on the opposite side of Washington on important matters of regional security. Equally troublesome is the Biden crime family role in this unfurling and belligerent scenario.

Karl Marx’s bias toward the “specialness” of the German nation had more pragmatism to it than history would allow—Russian serfs would provide a more fertile ground for sowing proletarian revolutionaries, far more than the reactionary Bismarckian factory worker that curdled into fascism. Maoism would ride this insight into the rice fields of China, repeating a vanguard-led peasant’s revolt against urban elites.

Marx, you will recall going all the way back to at least 1845, was trying to win elections while laying the foundations of communism with Germany, front and center. Germany remained a locus of problems during World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Versailles Peace Treaty, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Holocaust death camps, the division of Germany thereafter, the Cold War, Germany’s reunification, the elevation of a German EU, and now with the eventual breakup of NATO. What is it about Deutschland and the Germans themselves?

Marx and Engels’ analysis of German society can be fruitfully viewed as a materialist adaptation of earlier romantic views on German special development, with an undeniable debt to Bismarck—as per Marx’s own debates with the Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, where he ceded on the essential question of the pre-existing Kaiserian police state, a bite of Fouché’s statist apple which would flower into the NSDAP’s SA brownshirts. Marx’s fantasy was that the relatively prosperous Germany’s pattern of development differed markedly from the general theory outlined in part one of his infamous manifesto.

If the bourgeoisie could not further the development of society, that task necessarily fell to the all-critical German proletariat, thereby placing them at the head of the international workers’ movement—with Marx at the pinnacle. Thus, the initial relative backwardness of the German working class could be transformed into a position prior to that of England, the country that industrialized first, and France, where the most complete bourgeois revolution had occurred.

Germany was the lynchpin, the central actor in the European theater. And problematically, so it remains.

The Communist Manifesto contained the fullest exposition of the important Hegelian materialistic conception of history, which set out to show how, historically, societies had been structured to promote what was termed, the interests of the economically dominant class. But the work found no publisher and remained unknown during its authors’ lives, as it wasn’t published until 80 years later. The German Question however did not rest and continually assumed center stage, as it has yet again.

There are today two dilemmas that put Germany in the spotlight.The first disclosure goes back to the very founding of the European Union. The later situation of more recent newsworthiness, revolves around NATO.

Exhibit 1: The European Union

Already in 1952, Jean Monnet, one of the leftist French minds behind the European abduction candidly said, “Europe’s nations should be led towards a superstate, without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation. Germany is the key.”

The European Union and its antecedents were a product of ideologues and continentalists opposed to all English Lockean traditions and common law who, instead, followed Rousseau’s notion of a “General Will.”

European Rechtsstaat ideas of collectivism, statism, protectionism, and corporatism are not so apparent as the Blitz and the Wehrmacht, which is the reason they were successfully established in Europe under the garb and false pretense of the all-powerful administrative European Union. The Fabian strategy of avoiding conflict while grabbing as much power as possible worked for over four decades.

Since the end of World War II the Brits, among others, were bamboozled and its leaders acquiesced, even appeased, into the promotion of European, then German integration, against their better judgment and national interests. Many surrendered their citizenship wanting instead to be members of a global elite and “European.”

Recall at first, France’s Charles De Gaulle treated the Brits as supplicants and vetoed their application to join the clubby European Project. Battered Britain licked its wounds until she was finally allowed in, in 1973. The animosity between Germany and Britain has only grown and is even deeper today.

The anti-democratic European Project was created in the name of preventing the spread of Soviet-style communism but instead became a halfway house for it. Brussels never had as much power over its member states as Moscow did, but the leftist, socialist influence drew them ever closer. It was soon the nexus of more and more centralization and illiberalism, aptly named the EUSSR by many of its critics.

Britain, largely because of American pressure, allowed Europe to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The United States actively promulgated the plan and pushed it on its allies, more or less forcing the Brits to join Europe. This has had adverse consequences, including an anti-American prejudice, which is utterly counterproductive. It has unintentionally set up a major adversary to America with Germany at its core—diplomatically, economically, politically, and militarily—in spite of supposed NATO defense obligations (with which the Europeans still don’t comply). The unipolar moment America enjoyed after defeating the Soviet Union in 1991 was the breathing space needed to try another alternative.

Finally, after decades of strained and mostly one-way trans-Atlanticism, Trump turned the course, upset the tables like Jesus in the Temple, and altogether disrupted the ancien régime.

In fact, the deep roots of the European Union lay bare its darker and true orientation.

As Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission himself once quipped, “Governmental elites should be involved on the central decision-making process and increasingly identify with it . . . the process is not, in itself, democratic.”

This led to the real iron cage which should not be overlooked, namely: German hegemony.

The EU was always to be a way to both contain and expand the bogeyman of Europe, an uncontrollable Germany. The German Bundesbank itself admitted such throughout the latter 1990s. After reunification, they proudly pronounced: “The Federal Republic will ultimately be the country which profits most from European unity, even if this is not immediately visible.”

The essential truth is that American statesmen nurtured this European Movement and enmeshed democratic, common law, individualist, and Anglo-tradition bound Britain into an undemocratic and socialist, statist, foreign hyper-organization. By suborning democracy, the CIA in particular submerged Britain’s national interests (ironically) to those of Europe as a whole. The deep state, even then, always thought it knew best.

The promise of prosperity, security, and commercial advantage proved illusory.

Fortunately, Britain avoided the debacle of the Euro, the fake currency that lies at the heart of the European disaster. Nigel Farage got his start in populist agitation in the campaign against the Euro. The instability of the European system is reflected in its stagnant economies, grossly rigid structures, high unemployment, and low growth. To the extent that leaving the EU was possible, the victory of Sterling over the Euro in spite of Tony Blair’s premiership, was the vital turning point in this history.

Pity the poor(er) southern European states, faced with an economic crisis after having surrendered both fiscal and monetary policy to the EU—fighting against Germany’s economic might with both hands tied behind their backs.

Of course, if the Euro fails, Europe fails.

So, it is noteworthy that Chancellor Angela Merkel repeatedly reminded us that, “We have a Treaty under which there is no possibility of paying to bail out states in difficulty.”

And many there are. Their loss is Germany’s gain.

The EU is either a European Germany or a German Europe. Take your pick. Yes, Europe always seems to revolve around the so-called German Question, i.e., assertiveness and dominance by the former Prussians.

The 19th century German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte perhaps said it best: In Germany, freedom was transcendental, and that nation had a “special destiny” (besonderes Schicksal) in history to march toward it. Even if this romanticism meant imposing its will or eliminating others in the process, so be it, at any and all costs. Germany needed Lebensraum.

Remember, it was the intellectual and upper classes that allowed the emergence of the Third Reich due, in large part, to what later came to be known as the “authoritarian personality,” a.k.a., transfigured Nazis.

German tutelage still saturates all of Europe and is consolidated though the single currency, single market, dominance in interest rates (ECB), strict industry standards and protocols, overly bureaucratic laws, and panoply of regulations. In the German language this haughtiness is translated as, hochmütig, the bitter envy and disgust for the “other”—and lesser beings.

Of all this, Britain is thankfully now free. The Stockholm Syndrome of hostage taking is over and Britons no longer need to love their captors. Like Gollum breaking the spell of the “One Ring to Rule Them All,” nothing more than an act of will to turn back and say “no,” was necessary.

Brussels, it turns out, is after all a non-place—generic, dysfunctional, technocratic, cosmopolitan, and completely dystopian.

Free of the EU, the UK now has an historic opportunity. A new Renaissance beckons. The “Great” is being put back into Britain, as Trump would say.

Trade and innovation are flourishing, again. As a free-trading nation state, the UK is making its own way (on taxes and tariffs), secure in its own borders and laws, defending itself and experiencing much greater prosperity. The German Question was answered in the negative. Nein danke.

In a few short years, let alone five or 10 years on, Britain will become a real beacon—a light of freedom and all of Europe would be well advised to follow in her footsteps. The irreformable, anti-democratic German-centric Leviathan must be tamed or slain.

Auf Wiedersehen EU, and good riddance. Yet German domination did not die with Brexit: It rolls on and on.

Exhibit 2: NATO

Now we see Germany, a full (but free-riding) member of NATO and a huge beneficiary of its defense and protection for generations, walking back from that institution in the throes of Russia’s third invasion of Ukraine.

Yes, third. The first was in the Donbas with “little green men” eight years ago, and the second, while Obama slept, was Russia’s annexation of Crimea—without so much as the lifting of a finger and barely a protest.

This time with far more than 100,000 Russian troops and tanks amassed on three sides, Ukraine will totally fall and a puppet Russian government will soon be installed in Kyiv. NATO could do more than huff and puff or consider a bunch more damaging sanctions, but Germany won’t let it. The 30-nation organization (28 in Europe, plus Canada and the United States) is being torn apart by the German Question.

The Germans won’t defend Ukraine, send armaments or support, and have banned other countries (members of the same alliance) from using their airspace or ground transport to do so. Germany has broken with NATO and insisted on a pro-Russia approach and said it will not go along with some of the proposed Biden sanctions. Most important among those is the SWIFT financial payments system. Banning Russia from using it would be a crippling sanction with some teeth. Germany says no.

The new socialist government in Germany is further left of center than ever before and closer to Russia. Many of its primary cabinet members are Ossie’s—from East Germany, the former Soviet colony and coincidentally the place where Vladimir Putin was stationed when the Berlin Wall fell.

The real reason Germany is acting against NATO is selfish interest. Germany has expanded its empire eastward and to Russia in trade and investment over the last three decades. It sees this as their economic zone, exclusively.

In energy policy Germany has gone green, killing its nuclear power stations, failing to provide more than a small fraction of its needs from alternative sources, shuttering its coal plants, and making a total commitment to the carbon based natural gas option. With no supply of its own it is dependent on imports. And from where do those imports come? Russia.

The former socialist chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder, is now conveniently the chairman of Russia’s Gazprom. The pipeline to ship that gas runs through Ukraine but a better solution might be a direct link from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany cutting out the pesky Ukrainians. There you have it: Nord Stream 2.

Germany is entirely dependent on Russian gas, so it can’t upset the provider—with whom it is in bed.

Oddly, Joe Biden, after shutting down the Keystone pipeline here to placate his party’s progressive, anti-fossil fuel wing, removed the sanctions and allowed Russia to complete its Nord Steam 2 gas pipeline.

With the arm twisting of former Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty and his lobbyist firm, including former Reagan ambassador to Germany, Richard Burt (an anti-Trumper), they got Biden to do what the Russians and Germans had long wanted.

They were paid handsomely for their work. It didn’t hurt that Hunter Biden also received $3.5 million in a wire transfer around the same time from a Russian oligarch close to Putin and tied to the mayor of Moscow. For what? Likely for the same benefit as his $85,000 a month from the Ukrainian gas company that allowed his decadence and likely bribed his father.

The bottom line is that the Ukrainians voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons on our promise to protect them from nuclear blackmail. What will Moscow tell them if they demand for them back, or make another set? The American nuclear umbrella is still the world’s foremost means of preventing nuclear proliferation and that is still a good thing.

If the Germans want to get in the way of that, then the German Question forever remains the boogeyman of Europe.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including The Plot to Destroy Trump and, with Felipe J. Cuello, Trump’s World: GEO DEUS. He appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appears through the kind courtesy of American Greatness.

The Unending Agony Of Haiti

When it comes to the Haitian Revolution, history’s verdict is clear: Haiti is a failed state and always has been. A violent slave revolt 200 years ago does not a country make. Today, Haiti remains a cesspool of filth, poverty, and corruption. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with a per capita income of just $2,370 a year. Haiti is in fact the very poster child of such failed states, what a previous U.S. president of some acumen colorfully described as a “shithole” or pays de merde, in French.

Haiti’s revolt, after taking only a few royalist appointees off their own local chessboard, quickly became a full-fledged rebellion of the enslaved against the Napoleonic sham-republic. When it became clear that Paris would keep trying to balance the books with the blood of their uncompensated labor, Haiti’s sugarcane fieldworkers ended up murdering every white man, woman, and child on their side of the border, swiftly dominating the whole island through greater numbers and Madrid’s simultaneous fall to Napoleon—two centuries ago exactly in February.

Revolutionary glories from this wave of 19th-century globalization have long since faded in a state named the “Republic of NGOs” in 2010—after an earthquake so violent saw the country taken over by do-gooders from the United Nations and a host of international “charities.” The international third sector, in turn, bestowed the island with more corruption and other terrible consequences, including a very long list of sex crimes. More than a decade after the quake, Haiti’s presidential palace remains in ruins—a fitting symbol of what the Haitian state is good for after so much hand-holding.

The failure of the “international community” to deliver results in Haiti is a central plank of the anti-globalist argument and merits further study. Power abhors a vacuum, as the saying goes, and as surely as any of the laws of physics, the power vacuum in Port-au-Prince—exacerbated after the murder in his home of the sitting but term-expired President Jovenel Moïse—has finally created a great sucking sound loud enough to attract ne’er do-wells from the world over. Globalized conflict has arrived in a region otherwise characterized by universal accord—at least between states.

A 300 percent increase in kidnappings over 2020—already a historically high year for such a nefarious metric—denotes the fragile and collapsing authority of Haiti’s so-called central government. Even those who wagered in favor of progress have retreated to safety across the border (where a wall is going up) in the Dominican Republic. The process of state formation appears to be happening from scratch, with multiple warlords competing in the market of violence for primacy over land masses containing taxable population (prey, in libertarian parlance) and strategic sinecures such as port facilities and border crossings.

Worse, there appears to be a replication of the Syrian civil war playbook, with a handful of foreign powers backing various promising consortia of competitors within the thriving lack of monopoly on violence. All of this is occurring just 700 miles off the U.S. coast.

The police force the Clinton Administration foolishly imposed on the country after disbanding the Haitian armed forces has itself melted into these gangs, with street-level bureaucrats as prosaic as one beat officer pseudonymized as “BBQ” (an alias bestowed after burning down 400 residences with their residents inside, a war crime) posing as a viable alternative to the central government. Despite his appearance on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions list, Jimmy Chérizier (a.k.a. BBQ) has recently enjoyed a star turn on such state-backed stalwarts as Al Jazeera, sports modern weaponry of Israeli vintage, and has been seen in the company of executives from the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization. The Chinese also have their eye on Haiti.

All of this has unfolded under the blind eye of the American-backed Haitian central government and police, led by Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Haiti’s Leviathan has feet of clay, even when led by decree without a legislature and a dead head of state. The Dominican Republic, which shares the troubled island of Hispaniola, also recognizes this remnant of Haiti’s constitutional government.

All this is not without cost. Consider the kidnapping in November of Haitian-Dominican journalist Alexandre Galves. Haitian officials deny that Galves was taken on the Dominican side of the border—even though that’s almost certainly what happened and would constitute an act of war. Galves had unveiled corrupt details surrounding Haiti’s version of the Chavista influence-peddling (and politically compromising) cheap oil agreement run by Venezuela’s Cubans known as PetroCaribe—setting off the political crisis that preceded the current cycle of violence. As a pivotal actor in the opposition to the Moïse Administration’s reformist agenda, Galves’ disappearance gave credence to the increasingly obvious reality that Haiti is replacing Somalia as the world’s foremost example of anarchy.

The socialist and Brazilian-led pink tide of the 2000s, enforced through such stalwarts of the proletarian revolution as Cuba (a good example of illegitimate incidence in Haiti) are also present on the island on both sides of the border. Former Venezuelan intelligence chief Alex Saab is on the record testifying that Haiti is the best place in the world for arms trafficking, which is worrying, given his government’s link (again through oil) with an emerging axis has Nation of Islam black nationalists who have found their lodestar in the Haitian revolution. In teaming up with American Black Lives Matter activists (backstopped by the Congressional Black Caucus, no less), this coalition finds international expression in the Chinese-led Group of 77 (actually over 100 countries) whose bulk are the 54 African countries formally recognized by the United Nations.

There is a consistent ideological direction, and more dangerously one unfazed by the failure of the Haitian revolution to deliver abundance to the Haitian people (and answer arrogant princelings from middle kingdoms). Multiple forays into balkanization, monarchism and a French-inflected caudillismo generalize a through-line of lack of liberal self-government in all of Haitian history.

Foreign aggressions by Haiti include no less than seven invasions of its neighbor, which successfully repelled every attempt since its independence from Haiti’s domineering occupation between 1822 and 1844.

Sadly, Haiti has become a crossroads of the world of shadows, which cannot but end up being regarded in hindsight as a tinderbox waiting for a match. People in the region have some responsibility to plan for the future, including for the seemingly inevitable conflict between the major armed factions on Haitian territory—regardless of whose backing they have up to the point when the civil war finally sparks.

In Haiti, the refining of the art of throwing bad money after bad has reached levels hitherto unheard of. Haiti has no great mineral wealth or agricultural potential since disposing of its vegetation. No amount of sacrifice to the ideological golden calves of the Haitian revolution will ever be enough to make it work.

Despite this, U.S. Representative Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) managed to send a letter signed by 70 members of Congress demanding a change of policy from the Trump-era status quo. The price is being paid by the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries, onto whom the international community often shunts responsibility for Haitian problems, despite their own challenges.

As the international order deteriorates, the truth will set you free only in the sense that inconvenient issues—such as the international community’s notorious failure to fix Haiti—are continually swept under the rug. It is as much a finger in the eye of elitist globalist ambitions as Brexit or the migration crises around the world, and it will stop recognizing Taiwan as the real China soon if we don’t restore order there.

Dust off your copy of The Black Jacobins for Haitian Independence Day on January 1. The world over should be commemorating in grief the 200th anniversary of the Haitian invasion and atrocities.

Being caught in the crossfire of Haiti’s hurricane of horrors has never been a good time or a good place to be. But Western civilization is under threat, and the island of Hispaniola must stand ready to hold the line once again. Perhaps, Haiti should be dismantled and allowed to start over. Using its indigenous voodoo, it might commence by casting a better spell on itself.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch and Felipe Cuello are co-authors of Trump’s World: GEO DEUS. (This article appears courtesy of American Greatness).

Featured image: a composition by Marie-Hélène Cauvin, 2007.

Prudence As Common Sense

Early on the freezing cold Philadelphia morning of January 10, 1776, a booklet was published that changed American and indeed, world history. It was the watershed moment in the American Revolution.

The publication was called Common Sense and its author was Thomas Paine. The argument he made galvanized opposition to the Crown and catalyzed the political movement to independence.

We sorely need a return to such wisdom today in these United States. The future of American conservatism is rooted in it.

Paine was born in Britain and had immigrated to America only in 1774, at the suggestion of one Benjamin Franklin. Writing in the Pennsylvania Magazine, under the pseudonyms of Atlanticus, Aesop, and Vox Populi, he lashed out at the folly and wrongs of British authoritarian rule.

Paine’s short work was only 47 pages long. The tract was written in language every common person could understand. And it had an instant and dramatic effect. Striking a chord with colonist conscience, it was rapidly translated into many languages, reprinted thousands of times over, and circulated widely. It did nothing less than convince Americans undecided on the issue of independence that they should unite and separate around—freedom.

Like that powerful expression of the American mind, today we need a common sense approach to politics, culture, and to life. We need it to restore faith in the market and wealth creation and also to give common people—ordinary men and women, in America and around the world, a prudent voice for creating a better future.

This idea of common sense may have begun soaking into the American consciousness when Paine authored that famous pamphlet, but it did not stop there. Its plea for America to become independent had great effect on patriotic public opinion in the colonies and the republic down through the years.

Paine considered the content of his pamphlet to be a “plain truth” (which was, at first, his working title), clear to all right-thinking, rational persons. He had borrowed the phrase from its earlier use in England (as early as the 14th century), where it was considered a sense very much like our other senses. They were called the “five wits,” and the “common” sense united them into a useful whole.

Unfortunately, it is often said that common sense is not as common as it ought to be. Possibly the best recent spokesperson for common sense was Ronald Reagan. In his farewell address, the 40th president defined his revolution as “a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.” Actually, from the very start of his career, Reagan attributed his acceptance to his belief in the idea that society “could be operated efficiently by using the same common sense practiced in our everyday life, in our homes, in business and private affairs.”

We need it more than ever today with the onslaught of leftist ideology, American Marxism, and cancel culture. One thing is clear: Joe Biden completely lacks any common sense, if he has any cognitive sense at all.

But what is common sense and how does it apply to politics and all of life?

The typical definition of “common sense” revolves around notions of good practice and can be stated as, “the natural intelligence that is available to all rational people.”

Prudence and wisdom combine to make common sense.

This native intelligence is part of natural law; in business it starts with wealth creation, in politics with limited government, rooted in law.

Today responsible, purposeful conservative leaders are taking up this mantle again and laying claim to the phrase. It should be the hallmark of future conservatism.

What exactly does this mean, and how does it work?

What truths do we hold as self-evident in a common sense?

What is a commonsense framework, and what are the benefits—to workers, shareholders, and communities, and most critically to all citizens themselves?

In the field of economics, prudent/commonsense behavior saves money for when one is faced with an uncertain future: “risk aversion.” The so-called precautionary saving motive is one of many principles of this dismal science. In economics’ cousin, accounting, prudence is a fundamental concept. It determines the time at which revenue can be recognized, which is not an unimportant or inconsequential event.

Lawyers also still abide by the “prudent man rule,” a nearly 200-year-old judgement method appealing to common sense. Some governments have even established prudential conduct authorities or guidelines, intended to guide fiscal choices in a better direction after the financial crisis.

But it is the Church that has insisted on maintaining the virtue of prudence in all ventures, making it part of its standard for belief and practice. In the Catechism: “Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.” It goes on to conclude with some sound advice, “The prudent man looks where he is going.”

If prudent behavior is right reason in action—or, the natural intelligence that is available to all rational people—then why has it been mostly abandoned, forfeited in more recent times and nearly totally forgotten by our postmodern culture and governments? Why does the Left attack it so vehemently?

By tracing the history of common sense’s demise we can discover avenues for its possible resurrection.

For Aristotle, any conception of the good life employed practical wisdom. This wisdom, put into action, was prudence, and it was a virtue rooted not in meditation but experience. Experience teaches us how to relate universal truths to particular situations, and it underscores the variety of individual circumstances. Wisdom leads to prudence, which leads to action, which leads to experience and more wisdom.

As social beings, humans act. Sociologists call us “actors,” because that’s what we do. We achieve certain ends and do so in conjunction with other ends, pursuing the state of wellness that Aristotle knew as eudemonia. In his Nicomachean Ethics, he states, “Prudence is that virtue of the understanding which enables men to come to wise decisions about the relation to happiness of the goods and evils.”

Nine hundred years later, phronesis was the Latin translation of prudence (common sense) for Thomas Aquinas and other Church fathers as they incorporated Aristotelian ideas into their theological framework and moral theology.

By the time of Thomas Hobbes, however, at the start of the modern era, we witnessed a complete rejection of such thinking. Hobbes rejected prudence as a proper concept in philosophy, casting it aside as “mere conjecture.” This turned ethics on its head, as prudence was demoted from a virtue to a tattered theory.

During the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith (first and foremost a moral philosopher, and later the founder of economics) tried to revivify prudence and reconnect it to morality. An entire section of his opus, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is devoted to the virtue of prudence as a form of common sense.

The heavy influence of Stoicism can be seen in Smith’s contribution to the concept of prudence. He saw it as an aspect of self-command or self-control over one’s desires and emotions. In that sense, his view is closely akin to what earlier puritanical treatises called “temperance.”

Smith thought this a kind of “cold esteem” and tied it to frugality, industriousness, seriousness, and dispassion. Thinking as he did about the rising wealth of nations, Smith envisioned using prudence to make men “fit for society.” The virtues of a sound economy for him corresponded to those of the “prudent man.” Prudence was thus transformed back into a virtue—this time both economic and moral.

Today, however, prudence/common sense is hardly the supreme virtue it once was, if it is held up as a virtue at all. Leftists don’t like virtues, only so-called virtue signaling. And one unique feature of prudence—the ability to intelligently organize the nexus of skills and to act in good cause—has been nearly lost. This may be in part because we have abandoned the idea of a telos, a noble purpose guiding our actions into the future, in most of public life.

In our modern and liberal-progressive approach, the idea of an end has become more or less obsolete. Moral norms in the modern era have been relativized and separated from both daily life and practice. Prudence as an intellectual practice, signifying an excellence of the mind and of character, has come to be replaced by temporal preferences and the leveraging of short-term reward.

When we are required to define life as random chaos without order or spiritual/noble purpose, gratification must be instantaneous. Why wait? Why not just do as you please, and as your body drives you to consume, right now? Do so immediately, without any thought for tomorrow, let alone next year or the distant future for generations to come. This also leads to the politicization of nearly everything

No longer able to hold back gratification, modern individuals cannot delay desire in the present, even if in so doing, we could take steps to satisfy ourselves better later in time.

This is why our budget priorities are ridiculous and our national and private debt is out of control. It is why companies often take extreme risks. It is why the Biden Administration has completely capitulated to the progressive socialists.

Any resurrection of the notion of common sense will require a rejection of the modernist approach—and this will have profound consequences. Our narrowed perspective has turned prudence into a utility or even worse, some kind of cleverness. But it is in fact the virtue par excellence for guiding us into an uncertain and ever riskier future. We need to restore prudence as an intellectual virtue again in order to revive a deeper appreciation for human well-being (that is to say, if you want a bumper sticker, there is no eudemonia without phronesis). It will demand self-attention but also thoughtful, principled social interaction in our modern setting. Conservatives need to take this to heart in their political philosophy and policy proposals.

While prudence surely starts with the individual, it culminates in our actions together in society. Businesses must implement ethical management as a “core competency” for acting in responsible and humane ways. In this sense, business must also, in the first instance, appeal to common sense and experience—not to some modernist or woke ideology. And politics must focus on the real needs of citizens, not abstract theories and grandiose schemes and power grabs to keep progressives in office.

Common sense is rooted in the virtue of prudence, and it is primed for a comeback. It is high time for more practical wisdom and less irrational behavior.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including, The Plot to Destroy Trump and, with Felipe J. Cuello, Trump’s World: GEO DEUS. He appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appears through the kind generosity of American Greatness.

The featured image shows, “Allegory of Prudence,” by Titian; painted ca. 1550-1565.

Leadership As Service: A Conversation With Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

It is a great honor and delight to bring to our readers this wide-ranging conversation with Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, the well-known scholar, diplomat and business strategist. He is the author of many books, including, Practical Wisdom in Management, Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business, Common-Sense Business: Principles for Profitable Leadership, The Plot to Destroy Trump, Trump’s World, Davos, Aspen, & Yale: My Life Behind the Elite Curtain as a Global Sherpa. Dr. Malloch is interviewed by Nicholas Capaldi.

Nicholas Capaldi (NC): You once described yourself as a “recovering academic.” What did you mean by that?

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch (TRM): I meant, like a proverbial addict or drunk, I keep going back on the bottle no matter how I much I try to rid myself of the disease. Academic haughtier is like that. Having attained a Piled Higher and Deeper very early (nothing against earned degrees, per se), I was lured into believing in intellectual superiority and that the measure of a man’s value was the length of his erudite footnotes. My dissertation had forty pages of such. Know-it-all academics are too often pompous, arrogant, and full of themselves almost to a person. I know first-hand. Those who try to put on a humble façade are perhaps the worst of the lot.

NC: What helped you to recover?

TRM: Who said I had recovered? The plight is terminal. I have lapses. Like chronic cancer it is always with you. The best antidote is a dose of reality and repeated failure. For God’s sake, please keep academics out of real politics at all costs. As we know Marxists in particular, claimed over 100 million lives in the last century plus, and they have apparently not learned their lesson, quite yet. Such a great theory, we are told again and again, if only it could be tried. Well, it like all theories have generally been tried – and found wanting.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch.

NC: What is Academics Anonymous?

TRM: Academics surely need a 12-step process to get off their benighted sauce. But alas there is no such cause or organization. It might be better if we either had more anonymous academics in the first place or just produced fewer of them. I no longer even believe everyone should attend college – a heresy, I know. I have written recently and convinced a US Senator to tax all foundations and universities and take that cache (roughly $8 billion a year) and sink it into a fund to apprentice young people – to learn useable trades.

NC: You have been involved in the world of business in several different ways: investment, strategy, executive education, have authored books on business and ethics, and have been director of international conferences/summits on topics, such as, entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, etc. What have you learned from all of this?

Far more than I did sitting in a classroom. That is true even for the classes I myself taught. Book knowledge is fine; but only goes so far. To quote Augustine: “Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

Learning is a life-long process or journey and the minute it stops, you die. Terminal degrees are in fact terminal and breed a conceit and attitude that proves deadly to both the mind and the soul. Biting the fruit of the tree of knowledge lost us Eden. All things begin and cohere in and by the grace of the Creator and we should not forget this truth.

NC: Among your many hats, you have been a diplomat. How has this impacted your life?

TRM: Foggy Bottom, aka the State Department, The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the United Nations (Geneva) have given me real world experience and taken me to about 150 countries; some have merged, and others split. Much of it was negative power or lessons in the futility of nation-building. It certainly schooled me in the dangers of the administrative state and what has now come to be known as the “deep state.” My anti-globalism came as a direct result of my life in such places as described in grainy detail in my memoir, Davos, Aspen, and Yale. The statists and globalists fear me because I have been on the inside and know all their games and tricks.

NC: I understand you are persona non grata in the EU. Why is that?

TRM: That is, above all and beyond all the accolades, distinguished lectures, and honorary degrees I have received, my finest hour. I was made PNG by a vote of the European Parliament. Reason being, I was to be Trump’s ambassador to that august and feckless body – the very undemocratic European Union. It was a way of pissing on him while defaming me. You likely know I was on TV regularly in that period, backing Brexit and criticizing the EU. I said confidently on the BBC’s top evening show, “I had in an earlier diplomatic assignment been part of the team that brought down the Soviet Union and maybe there is another Union that needs a little taming.” I quickly became their nemesis and the papers famously called me, “The most feared man in Europe.” They said I was “malevolent.” My reply – they lacked a theory of good and evil, so how would they know?

NC: You have written on President Trump, and I believe you served him in several capacities. Given all the controversy about Trump, what do you make of his presidency?

TRM: Like all human affairs it was a mixed ordeal. My books praise him and his policies and give him high marks for attempting to “drain the swamp” and revive American Greatness. But he was not perfect by any means and made many bad personnel decisions. As an American Caesar he was a kind of Geo Deus as we called him, but he did not share well or distribute credit. As I said in my original endorsement in Forbes magazine, comparing him to Teddy Roosevelt and his economic nationalism of the last century, his twin faults were lack of humility and hubris. They could cost him dearly. Conservatives too can fall on these and other related vices.

NC: Was the 2020 US election fraudulent?

The best way perhaps to answer this question is to utilize the P.D. Woodhouse literary method of simile. Is Nirmal Dass Catholic? Is Nicholas Capaldi a masterful logician? Is Ted Malloch a WASP?

You get my drift. Not only was the election “fraudulent” in a thousand ways as demonstrated in detail by the journalist, Mollie Hemingway, in her definitive new book, Rigged, but the result has produced an illegitimate President, as I said in print and on air in November of 2020. Since then, unlike the mythical figure, Midas, everything Biden has touched has turned to stone. It is as if we are reaping the reward of our collectivist big lie. Our only hope is to restore electoral integrity.

NC: What is the future on conservatism?

TRM: With the fall of the institutions, including the all-important mediating structures, changing demography, and the dearth of spiritual backbone, I would have to say – less than auspicious. Perhaps, the worse things get, the more a remnant will rise to see again America’s exceptional role, the need for faith and the utter rootlessness and anomie of our current demise. There are a few signs of such renewal. My books are I believe, in retrospect, a commentary on the cycle of necessary virtue. Faithfully build wealth and prosperity – realize spiritual capital – save and invest using thrift as a guide – be generous – avoid the lure of always tempting vices – lead as an act of service – and renew the culture.

NC: What do you think is the future of the Republican Party? The next election? Indeed, of America?

TRM: Political parties historically come and go, and the present Republicans are mostly a sad bunch, with the RINO GOP establishment hardly distinguishable from their adversaries. The neo-cons are the cause of our ludicrous interventionism and failures abroad, and the paleos are stuck in the past and dying off at any rate. I think a more vibrant form of national conservatism with strong spiritual acumen and practice is the only and best route forward. We should win the US 2022 by-elections and retake the House and Senate, but we need all new leadership, not the same old drones and has-beens, to succeed. 2024 is far off and could be a replay; or instead witness the emergence of a new wave of younger, smarter patriotic conservative leaders. We know who they are and now need to place them in places where they can shine.

NC: Which writers have most influenced your thinking? Who are your mentors?

TRM: I grew up reading, at my father’s knee, the great books and the holy Bible. They are my legacy and formed my entire worldview. They are not replaceable and certainly not by tertiary and second-hand thinkers. I was fortunate in my education to have had many great teachers and mentors who shaped me and much of my thinking, for which I accept all the blame. At the pinnacle that included the brilliant neo-Calvinist, and himself the best student of the Dutch juridical scholar, Herman Dooyeweerd. That Burkean/Smithian tradition and systematic philosophy remains very much a part of who I am, what I believe, and how I think. They call it Anti-Revolutionary.

NC: Your friends know you to be a deeply religious person. What has been the role of faith in your life?

As Bill Buckley often reminded us, based on Voegelin, if he was honest, “You can’t immanentize the eschaton.” Too often, particularly in political life and its many ideologies, people have tried to bring heaven to earth. Since it can’t be done – a massive price has been paid; damage done in the name of some or other false idol.

My Scottish family coat of arms has as its inscription the Latin – “Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni ut veritatem attesti.” I am and have been since birth a devout follower of the one Lord, our Jesus, the Christ, and follow the Westminster confession. I know my eternal resting place, which is most reassuring for my time and activity on this terrestrial ball.

The featured image shows, “Cincinnatus recevant les ambassadeurs de Rome [Cincinnatus receiving the ambassadors of Rome],” by Alexandre Cabanel; painted in 1843.

Wearing The Full Armor Of God

When Ron DeSantis, Florida’s conservative Republican governor and likely presidential candidate, said recently we need to put on the “full armor of God,” the media looked at him like he was crazy—or from another planet. But his supporters gave him a standing ovation.

As secular liberals, most of the press have no familiarity with the phrase, its origins, theology, or importance. They are bigots against religion and unschooled in what used to be the norms of American life, churches, and culture.

The press and nearly our entire elite ruling class, in academia, sports, politics, media, business, and culture are biblically illiterate and have no idea what the Jar of Nar (John 12:3) refers to; where the road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13-35) led or who travelled on it; or even what happened in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26: 36-46).

Let me brief them on the context, content, and significance of the “full armor of God,” which are, of course, the words of St. Paul, found in Ephesians 6: 10-18. Yes, that is a book in the New Testament.

Paul, formerly Saul, was a Hellenized Jew and a Pharisee who converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus. This turning point in his life totally transformed him from a persecutor of Jesus’ followers into Christ’s primary missionary throughout all of Asia Minor. In the Acts of the Apostles and various letters to the churches of the ancient world—which are critical parts of the Bible—he inspired and offered sacred words of God.

The full armor of God that Christians are called upon to wear comprises: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit.

This armor of God is a metaphor that Paul (and now DeSantis) used to remind Christians about the spiritual battle they confront. It describes the protection the Lord makes available to be strong, to share his mighty powers, and to take a stand against the devilish schemes and temptations of this world.

The struggle Paul reminds us of is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers and principalities of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. DeSantis knows his enemies and they are already after him as an heir apparent to Trump.

By suiting up, so to speak, we can, like the governor of Florida, with much prayer and practice, implement the habits of God. What then exactly are these pieces of armor? I am sure the press is curious and dumbfounded when Christians—Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Charismatics, Mormons, and the Orthodox branches—use such language, which is their long tradition. I will explain.

The Belt Of Truth

The first and central piece of armor is the belt of truth. It is, by its very definition, what is true and therefore—not false. Every other piece of armor is attached to truth. We live in a constant battle of truth and light against falsehood and darkness. We need to cover ourselves in God’s word—His truth, not man’s lies and ideologies.

The Breastplate Of Righteousness

As a gift of God righteousness protects believers from sinful entanglements. It gives the heart of God. Obedience is the way of the Lord and this breastplate, when in place, provides that protection.

The Gospel Of Peace

Peace is an attribute of the Lord’s very person. In Greek it means a whole character. The Gospels, which brought “good news” also bring forgiveness and access to God through faith in Christ. The result of that faith is a deep and abiding peace. Paul in his various letters constantly reminds believers, often in travail and under persecution, to “stand firm.”

The Shield Of Faith

Taking up the shield of faith refers to the Roman soldiers’ shields dipped in water to extinguish fiery darts. The Christian shield is dipped in the water of God’s holy word. It is replenished and made real by hearing and doing the word of God. Faith is increased when tested.

The Helmet Of Salvation

Salvation is a helmet that comes from trust in the death and resurrection of Christ. It is also realized as a long and slow process of sanctification. The battlefield of the mind is the primary place where the spiritual battle is fought. As Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

The Sword Of The Spirit

This last piece of armor is God’s word itself. It is both offensive and defensive. When tempted by Satan, like Jesus in the desert, followers can find solace and comfort but just as critical, spiritual power, by using this weapon.

The press can now realize how strange and distant this all seems to their radically secular, liberal, atheist minds. This is why they hate devout believers like DeSantis, and conservatives generally. While they make noises about freedom of conscience, in fact, the Left wants the world rid of this and all theological content. For them there is no transcendence and only the material life of the flesh. It scares the hell out of them—and well it should.

In the face of foreign enemies who want to kill or enslave us, the full armor is the key differentiator between America and her communist adversaries. In these times of decadent and predatory cultures of death—from rap music to film to unlawful behavior and abortion on demand—the full armor is the alternative along with the civilized and ordered life, realized in America’s founding and faithfully lived for generations by her people.

In this unprecedented period of continual falsehoods against America—alleging its role in the world as a racist, rogue power—the full armor is the defense of faithful everyday Americans who are besieged and attacked. In our era of leftist politicians engaged in constant deception and pure evil, the full armor is the remnant of a believing past and a call to a better and faithful future. It is the spiritual essence of—making America great again.

Is there any reason why the detractors of DeSantis wouldn’t absolutely fear the full armor of God?

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including, The Plot to Destroy Trump and, with Felipe J. Cuello, Trump’s World: GEO DEUS. He appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appeared in American Greatness.

The featured image shows an allegory of the miles christianus, from the Summa Vitiorum by William Peraldus, mid 13th century.

What To Do About China

If the release of the deadly COVID-19 virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 was intentional and sanctioned by the People’s Liberation Army germ warfare unit led by General Chen Wei, its top biological warfare expert, it was an act of belligerent aggression—on America and the rest of the world.

The proper response should have been, as immediately after Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941, a resolute declaration of war announced by the president and supported by Congress.

Now that we know China’s game, it’s time to go kinetic.

By that I mean, as in physics, the acts resulting in motion. We have been way too reticent to act for all the wrong reasons. Our China policy needs to completely change. The only real impediment is Beijing Joe himself, who is in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party. His Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania took $54 million just days before he assumed the presidency from the Chinese and his criminal son, Hunter, has yet to unwrap himself from a $1.5 billion Chinese investment scheme he landed when his father flew him, at taxpayer expense, to China on Air Force 2.

Enough already with placating the Chinese Communist Party or bending to its will and its absolute dictator, Xi Jinping. Xi recently said that China will not allow “sanctimonious preaching” or bullying from foreign forces, and anyone who tries “will find themselves on a collision course with a steel wall forged by 1.4 billion people.” Shut him down.

Where do we stand? The CCP wields absolute rule over 1.4 billion people, and absolute control over one of the world’s largest economies. China today is also an isolated member of the international community due to its human rights abuses and actions towards regional neighbors such as Taiwan, India, and others who dispute China’s claims in the South China Sea.

Its relations with countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia—with which it is locked in bitter disputes—are at their lowest point ever. China is a pariah nation, very much like Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II. Look at this DIA report on growing Chinese military power if you want the numbers on their vast military buildup. This is the time for a first strike.

Attempting a phony Munich-type appeasement agreement or some postponement of the inevitable is senseless and wrongheaded. China is only growing stronger, more aggressive, and more authoritarian by the day. Let’s admit the obvious—the Nixon-Kissinger plan, followed by every U.S. administration since, has not worked. Red China is not going to change its ways. They are not going to become democratic, free, or peaceful. Not happening. Just the opposite: they plan to take over the world.

We get other like-minded nations to join us in drawing a line in the sand and the sea. Taiwan is immediately an independent country, recognized as sovereign. Move on Hong Kong and we move on you. The Indian boundary line is defended and secured. Most aggressively, we have to obliterate the islands offshore that China has militarized and made into de facto aircraft carriers. Sink them. No nukes necessary.

Just as in chess, America needs a winning strategy to cleverly defeat China. Understanding our relative strengths and what is worth the most, we need to develop control over the center. Good intel on Chinese moves will be critical, as we have to make every move count. By doubling the output of every move, we can catch them off guard which will force them into bad moves that hurt them. We close with devastating disruptions—things they never expected, and it is game over.

Remember China is not trying to compete with the United States within the Westphalian order, but to overthrow that order altogether. They must be stopped now—before it is too late, and they gain the upper hand.

As Peter Navarro reminded us years ago, China’s non-kinetic “Three Warfares” may prove to be more effective at expanding China’s maritime and territorial boundaries than any arsenal of missiles or fleet of Chinese aircraft carriers. The Three Warfares were first officially recognized as an important warfighting capability by China’s Central Military Commission and Communist Party in 2003. They include everything from psychological and legal to media warfare.

The goal of China’s psychological warfare has been to deter, demoralize, or otherwise shock an opponent nation and its civilian population and thereby discourage the opponent from fighting back or taking any action at all. It has worked—until now.

Stop taking the Chinese bait. A definitive kinetic first strike becomes our best knockout punch. In early August 2019, long before this current state of conflict arose, I wrote: “A new chapter is unfolding, and China must be confronted without delay.” I have not been alone in this assessment. Read Gordon Chang’s telltale warning, The Coming Collapse of China. Beijing is a paper tiger, and we need to call her bluff and take a decisive move now.

We need to back it up with economic, political, and military counterblows to take down the Chinese Communist Party. The people of China are not our nemesis—but their Communist leadership and its extensive network are enemy number one. Thinking and planning about war with China should be our highest priority.

We still need to take all of the economic, tech transfer, tariff- and trade-related, regulatory and stock market measures I outlined earlier. But after 4 million Chinese-caused COVID-19 deaths worldwide, this is a totally different episode. It is a new chapter.

It is time to go kinetic. Then it will be game over and we can celebrate VC Day.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including, The Plot to Destroy Trump and, with Felipe J. Cuello, Trump’s World: GEO DEUS. He appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appeared in American Greatness.

The featured image shows “Volga Tracker” by Ling Feng.

A WASP Manifesto

In recent decades, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) has become a derogatory term for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of white British Protestant ancestry. In some circles it is a word of considerable derision. If the woke crowd had its way, such whiteness would be banned or somehow eradicated altogether.

The accolade WASP applies to a group believed to (have) controlled large and disproportionate social, political, and financial power. WASPs, it was said, had a degree of “privilege” held by few others. We tend rather to call it “responsibility.”

Few people, however, bragged about the WASP cuisine of overcooked, bland foods, boring Brooks Brothers fashion or décor, which was notably, “shabby chic.”

Various “Preppy” handbooks tried to outline the necessities for a WASPy look and demeanor, but they were impossible for the mass culture to copy, let alone master—even with the help of Ralph Lauren (real name: Ralph Lifshitz).

Even in the classic 1980s WASP comedy “Trading Places,” Eddie Murphy (along with Dan Aykroyd) found it difficult to play the white guy role in Mainline Philadelphia, which is what made the movie so incredibly funny. Of course, that genre of film could not be made today, or it would be canceled immediately.

WASPs are no better or worse than anyone else, truth be told. I would know because I “is” one. Like others, we put our pants on one leg at a time, to quote my ultimate authority—my own father.

Many scholars agree that the group’s influence has waned since the end of World War II and then into the 1960s, with the growing influence of Jews, Catholics, African Americans, and other former outsiders. Statistically, that case is easily made as the country became more diverse and various ethnicities came to power, not just politically but economically and culturally—perhaps most notably in sports.

Historically, “Anglo-Saxon” has been used for centuries to refer to the Anglo Saxon language (today more correctly called “Old English”) of the inhabitants of England and much of modern Scotland before about 1100. And since the 19th century it has been in common use in the English-speaking New World, but not in Britain itself, to refer to all Caucasian people of British descent, who were mostly Protestants. The “W” and “P” were added in the late 1950s in the United States to form a witty epithet with an undertone of so-called waspishness.

The first published mention of the term was provided by a political scientist, Andrew Hacker, in 1957, indicating it was already used as common terminology among American sociologists and social commentators:

They are ‘WASPs’—in the cocktail party jargon of the sociologists. That is, they are wealthy, they are Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are Protestants (and disproportionately Episcopalian). To them Waspishness should be added the tendency to be located on the Eastern seaboard or around San Francisco, to be prep school and Ivy League educated, and to be possessed of inherited wealth.

While WASP culture and influence may be on a rather steady decline it is impossible to appreciate American, or indeed world history, without a proper comprehension of our influence for more than a thousand years—and most prominently in the American founding and the institutions then spawned and which survive (at least until recently) to this day.

But please note however, this is not about any kind of racial supremacy, ethnic gloating, gender power, or religious exclusion. WASP is just a cultural euphemism, nothing more.

It is also very much part of my own story. So, years ago at a Christmas brunch and with plenty of Mimosas, my sons asked me the perplexing question: “Dad, what is it exactly that you have done?” The long answer to the query was provided some years later in my memoir, Davos, Aspen & Yale: My Life Behind the Elite Curtain as a Global Sherpa.

As an “apologetic,” I sought to outline, in some grainy and mostly humorous, if not witty detail, the ways in which my life intersected completely with the waning WASP culture at places like, Wall Street, Wharton, The U.S. State Department, in diplomacy, Davos, Aspen, Yale and all the places in between—from clubs to golf to hunts and crew. As I said then, George Bush 41 was the prima facie best example perhaps of the American species of the WASP. He was educated, service-oriented, loyal, genteel, humble, and reverential. When he died, they carried his casket off to the Texas burial site playing his favorite hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers.

But an apologetic is not what many think it is. It most definitely is not an apology—a way of saying: “I am sorry.” To the contrary, in the historic and theological sense—as it was for St. Augustine and the church fathers—the practice of apologetics is (from Greek ἀπολογία, “speaking in defense”) the discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse.

There is no reason whatsoever to be apologetic about being White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant or of having shaped and formed American culture and its institutions, alas also, Western civilization itself. It stacks up quite well against all of the alternatives. Not perfect, it gave us law, economics, science, modern medicine, and democracy. Markets and freedom are its longstanding hallmarks. In fact, it has been said, we invented the modern world, ended slavery, and invited pluralism within our borders.

This will likely gain me considerable disfavor at least with the far lefties, certain (critical theorist) academics, and racist white haters—but is time someone forthrightly said it.

Being white is not a sin.

Coming from British ancestry is not a sin.

Worshipping God and his only son, Jesus Christ, is not a sin.

It was and still is for many of us who we are, and everyone is the beneficiary. We are not going away, dying off, committing any form of suicide or going out of business. We won’t be canceled, either.

Quite the contrary—it is our country, and we are more than willing to fight for it while sharing it with anyone, but only if you respect the rules and obey the law.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including The Plot to Destroy Trump and appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appears through the kind courtesy of American Greatness.

The featured image shows, “Siège de Yorktown,” by Louise-Charles-Auguste Couder, painted in 1836.

The Economics Of More Government

Biden’s economic plan will prove disastrous for both the United States and the world economy. Bidenomics will not “build back better” as the slogan says but will have deleterious effects on nearly everyone—unless you happen to live and work inside the Washington, D.C. beltway.

Biden, himself in the midst of a five-decade career in the federal government, has a net worth of over $10 million and owns two multimillion-dollar properties. Not bad for a lowly middle-class civil servant from Delaware who started with nothing. Who says government doesn’t pay, if you know how to tweak the system by getting huge speaker fees and kickbacks? Biden has sucked on the teat of the state his whole life—it is all he knows.

You may recall the “two cows” political satire that grew up after World War II. It goes like this:

  • Under Communism, you have two cows. The government takes them both and then gives you some milk.
  • Under fascism, you have two cows. The government takes them both and then sells you some milk.
  • Under capitalism, you have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
  • Under Bidenism, you have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

America has never been a socialist country. The people, culture, and pioneer spirit just never allowed it. Yes, some groups wanted slightly more government intervention in the economy or a slightly larger welfare system but until Bidenism, the view held that capitalism was, as the saying goes, as American as apple pie.

No longer.

Under Biden’s woke economic plan, written by none other than the always wrong Paul Krugman, there are just four basic rules. These are not figments of my imagination or construction, either—he delivered them verbatim in the New York Times.

Rule 1: Don’t doubt the power of government to help.

For Biden, who put a huge portrait of Franklin Roosevelt in the Oval Office, more government is always better. Biden never saw a problem he thought the government couldn’t fix. Unlike Bill Clinton, who admitted government is often the problem, Biden fervently believes government can end poverty, curtail the carbon economy, pick winners and losers, and provide the best welfare and health insurance. He will attempt to do everything in his power to swell the size and budget of the central government. That is his core economic premise. Biden has zero business experience except for shaking down corrupt foreign powers in his family’s pay-to-play scheme and wouldn’t know a profit from a loss column.

Rule 2: Don’t obsess about debt.

Sure, we have record budget deficits, and the national debt is on the way to $30 trillion. The more the better. Biden is great at spending other people’s money and printing more. His Federal Reserve is now willing to fight climate change and the Democrat wants to raise taxes by $2 trillion on the backs of everyone making more than $200,000—and on all corporations. This will kill the economic recovery. In Bidenomics, debt is good and more debt is better. A $3 trillion climate change bill is next and near-universal healthcare will follow that soon. Biden is so keen on importing immigrants that he doesn’t care what it costs. Be assured the collapse of the dollar is inevitable in Bidenomics.

Rule 3: Don’t worry about inflation.

The economy’s silent killer is rising inflation. Just ask countries that have suffered its plight. No one escapes its trajectory, everyone loses. Biden wants a hot economy. He doesn’t worry for a nanosecond about inflation. His advisors tell him not to care. It doesn’t matter. But watch the figure as it is about to explode. The laws of real economics do not jibe with the rules of Bidenomics. Government employees and teachers’ unions will get continuous cost of living adjustment increases matched to inflation, but the rest of the population can suffer and go to hell.

Rule 4: Don’t count on Republicans to help govern.

While Biden regularly boasts of bipartisanship and unity, he does not act on it. Instead, his obvious plan is to jam every and anything through a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. If that doesn’t work, he will rule by executive order and circumvent the legislative branch of government completely. The urgent need is for dictatorial power and Biden has a short window (until 2022) to execute all that he intends to accomplish.

Biden would be wise to listen to Britain’s famous Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, who once said, “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” But Biden is deaf on economics. He is on a mission to transform the country and redistribute its wealth based on race and class.

Thatcher questioned the false compassion of socialists, and dared to expose statism as the senseless, dehumanizing cult that it is. She rhetorically ripped the velvet glove from the iron fist and spoke of the welfare state as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Those are things state worshipers, like those around Biden, cannot abide. Under Bidenomics there is no sense of limits or prudence and little appreciation for the horrible and murderous history of socialism in its various forms elsewhere around the world. Instead, Joe and his woke authoritarians are hell-bent on bringing socialism to America.

Bidenomics will see accommodative monetary policy, expansive fiscal policies, and radical structural reforms, not based on competitiveness but built around rebuilding a comprehensive—and woke—welfare state. And you will end up working most of your waking hours to pay for it.

Biden seeks to undo 40 years of American economic history and to forego growth for ideology. The result should scare all investors, anyone with a 401k or a pension, and the rest of the world that still has its horses tied to the U.S. economic engine. When interest rates rise—and they will—the entire global economy and especially the emerging markets will suffer and falter. Bidenomics will see the stock market decline sharply in six months, unemployment rise, and will do little besides grow the administrative state.

As F. A. Hayek observed in The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944 as a response to Communism and fascism, socialism is an allure to a society based on equality. He knew that the desire for greater central planning by a leftist intellectual elite would be ruinous for free societies. Increasing the power of the state would put us on “the road to serfdom”—meaning the masses would work to serve those who hold the power of government.

Hayek’s conclusion: “By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way, a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.”

Welcome to Bidenomics.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including, The Plot to Destroy Trump and appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appears through the kind courtesy of American Greatness.

The featured image shows, “Political Corruption,” a cartoon by Louis Dalrymple, from 1894.

America’s “Dreyfus Affair”

In an open letter published on the 13th of January 1898 in the paper L’Aurore, and written by the famous writer Émile Zola, entitled, J’accuse, injustice was exposed. A rigged court martial had just acquitted a guilty man to cover up the brass’s wrongdoing.

Accusing the French government of anti-Semitism and unlawful actions it pointed out gross judicial errors and lack of evidence in the jailing of a French general staff artillery officer named, Alfred Dreyfus.

Dreyfus was a mid-level officer from a prominent and prosperous Jewish family. He was dubiously accused of espionage—working with the Germans on the flimsiest hearsay evidence. In fact, he was framed based on what turned out to be a forged document—evidence would later conclude that the leak came from an infantry officer.

In other words, Dreyfus was just a scapegoat. This series of sordid 19th century events occurred in a climate of hatred, bigotry, intrigue and mass murder.

In questionable proceedings, Dreyfus was found guilty of treason. The secret court martial denied him the right to examine the very evidence against him—pleading national security, the piece that secured his conviction wasn’t publicly revealed. War itself would break out, said the brass, if this information was published. Stripped of rank, his regimental officer’s sword was ritually broken in front of the officer corps and a crowd of spectators. Stripped of rank, the army sent him off to Devil’s Island, a remote penal colony in South America.

Retried some years later he appealed yet a third time and obtained an annulment. Late in 1906 Dreyfus was awarded the Cross of the Legion d’honneur. It was given for a soldier who had “endured an unparalleled martyrdom.”

The entire affair caused quite a stir and considerable societal upheaval. Zola himself became the target of libel and was found guilty. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England. His own Légion d’Honneur was removed for writing “J’accuse.”

Ever since, the term, “J’ accuse” has become a common expression of outrage and accusation against someone powerful.

Donald Trump is today’s—Alfred Dreyfus. And we have all become enemies of the illegitimate Woke State.

Trump, too, was framed by a fraudulent Steele Dossier paid for by the Clinton Democrat machine and fabricated by the opposition research cabal, Fusion GPS. It was then weaponized by intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement and used to spy on both Trump and his campaign. As Zola says about Dreyfus’ imprisonment, the severity of the abominable acts which put Biden in the White House grows hour by hour.

In my book, The Plot To Destroy Trump, I described that (first) attempted coup in grainy detail outlining all the forces at work to depose a duly elected leader. Third time’s the charm! Trump’s term was completed without being interrupted but his re-election could not be permitted. A coup!

It should be transparent now just how this machine, aka the deep state, operated in a calculated orchestration to subvert the presidency of Donald Trump. They did so from the moment he announced his candidacy. They first called for his impeachment on the very same day he was inaugurated in January of 2017.

And the lengths and depths the media stooped intentionally to distort this story for ratings—whether through viewership, clicks, likes, or shares which translated into more ad revenue—was absurd. Even in victory, there’s no end in sight to their duplicity.

And yet, as we’ve seen through this complicated, tangled story—a story that is truly stranger than fiction, because much of it actually is fiction—the media is just one of the many cogs in this machine that is capable of taking a seedling of information and, through a game of telephone, grow that seed into a great big redwood of a story: a literal Red November. It was a profound hoax formed in a set of lies used as disinformation with the installation of a Manchurian candidate through color-revolution tactics on American soil, by operatives who aren’t allowed to operate in America.

Trump suffered constant denigration and biased hatred over five years. He was called a “liar” and far worse more times than can be counted. He was mocked and accused constantly of white supremacy, bigotry, racism, sexism, xenophobia—you name it. None of it true.

His first impeachment,based on a phone call, was cooked up by a fake whistleblower and was a total sham. His unconstitutional second impeachment had no due process, no evidence, no hearings and resulted in yet another acquittal in the Senate. It was frivolous and based on doctored findings and the venal vengeance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

She is a truly evil, vindictive person and the worst Speaker of the House of Representatives in American history. The San Francisco Democrat is the product of corrupt Baltimore politics where her father was a notorious mayor. Her wealth is ill-begotten and her pseudo-Catholicism a showcase for virtue signaling.

Yet the accusations continue.

Trump’s enemies know no boundaries. They hate his populism, his effectiveness, and his electoral prowess. They detest his supporters and want to cancel more than 75 million of his voters and de-platform them from all social media. Yet it hasn’t worked. It has backfired.

They want him gone so badly because the blue-collar billionaire turned politician defeated their established ways. They were willing to do literally anything to banish him and keep him from ever running or endorsing any candidate for office again. They have failed, yet again, but not for lack of trying.

The United States does not have a Legion of Honor but if we did Donald Trump should receive its highest award for “political martyrdom.”

In the words of Emile Zola (translated from the French), “I accuse General de Pellieux and Major Ravary [insert, Nancy Pelosi] of having carried out a rascal investigation, by which I mean an investigation of the most monstrous partiality, of which we have, in the report of the second, an imperishable monument of naive audacity.”

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including The Plot to Destroy Trump and appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appears through the kind courtesy of American Greatness.

The featured image shows, “The Peril of France—At the Mercy of the Octopus,” a print by Louis Dalrymple, published October 26, 1898.

The Necessity Of Virtue

In this long, dark winter in the first year of the illegitimate reign of Joseph the Senile, we are confronted simultaneously with an acute culture war, a destructive cancel culture, and a degree of foolish political “wokism” unlike anything in modern history.

Politics is done by edict, troops surround the Capitol, and the dissenters are dismissed and deplatformed in what neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse referred to as “repressive tolerance.”

At the core of this pretend politics is a strict and absolute adherence to the “correctness” of the new slogans, untruths, and blatant virtue-signaling the Democrats use to advertise their own moral positioning for the purpose of self-promotion and domination.

Yet recall the major virtues of the Western tradition—the pagan virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and prudence and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity) so unlike the Left’s current fake smoke signals.

Nothing could be more different from virtue than virtue-signaling.

Remember as well, four plus three equals the Seven Virtues, a combination most thoroughly analyzed by St. Thomas Aquinas [largely in Questiones disputatae de veritate, Summa contra gentiles, Quæstiones Disputatæ: de veritate, and Quæstiones Disputatæ: de malo; et de virtutibus.]: the four virtues of the polis and the three virtues of the monastery.

It is not absurd to connect the four pagan virtues with Socrates and the three theological virtues with Jesus—the two great models upon which, until recently, we based our tradition of moral excellence. Socrates epitomized the philosophy of Athens and Jesus the theology of Jerusalem.

Charismatic figures, both men were masters who left no written teachings and founded no schools but who simply set an example.

In the efforts of their disciples and the passionate narratives inspired by their deaths, we see the beginnings of the inward vocabulary which, until recently at least, was the encoded recognition of our entire moral, philosophical, and theological idiom.

Discipleship of these two great and historic examples became a bulwark, fundamental to the entirety of Western morality.

All that is being swept away, as if it never existed. Gone . . .

The classicist George Steiner offers us in his many books—most notably, Lessons of the Masters—a sustained reflection on the infinitely complex and subtle interplay of power, trust, and passions in the most profound sorts of pedagogy.

Steiner considers a diverse array of traditions and disciples, returning throughout to three underlying themes—the master’s power to exploit his student’s dependence and vulnerability, the complementary threat of subversion and betrayal of the mentor by his pupil; and, the reciprocal exchange of trust and love, and of learning and instruction, between teacher and disciple.

Can we relearn what has been lost or forgotten? Can we possibly rediscover true virtue in a period of dangerous tumult and pure hatred? Are we adrift in a sea of moral relativism or worse, complete nihilism?

Virtue and the moral life must be founded on something. They are always grounded. They are not relative or subjective, as we have come to think of most preferences in the last two centuries.

For thousands of years and in many different religious and philosophical traditions, some concept of transcendence has been the fulcrum for the development of virtues that in these past eras sustained human flourishing.

Can it be so again? Or are we being deprogrammed to exclude any notion of dialogue, logic, and reason? Have we entered a new totalitarian era, a great “reset” as the Davosians refer to it, where only one line of thinking is acceptable?

If you visit the great cathedrals in Europe (perhaps frowned upon these days), you would be convinced of a higher purpose as you stared at the arches leaping into the heavens and took in the liturgies and artwork of faith. I have been to many of these places and in almost all have seen some profound visual depiction of virtue.

It is decidedly not part of the ruling Biden ideology or the CNN mindset.

Instead, these depictions typically follow an iconographic program inspired by the once prevailing scholastic thought, with reliefs representing the human activities related to the virtues of necessitas (civil life, supreme sciences, intellectual speculation); the mythical inventions of the arts (painting, sculpture, and architecture); liberal arts, grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, and arithmetic, medicine, geometry, and astronomy; the divine virtues (faith, hope, and charity); and the cardinal virtues (wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage).

Today all these are getting wiped away—forgotten or worse, castigated to the waste bin of history and cursed as racist or fascistic.

We urgently need to reestablish a discussion of all these modes of thought and modern virtues to recover what has been lost and to shine a light that could actually illumine our future. “Truth dies in darkness,” as the aphorism goes.

Tradition emphasized character over rules or consequences as the key element or driver of ethical thinking. In the West, virtue ethics was the prevailing approach to ethical thinking in the ancient and medieval periods. The tradition suffered a complete eclipse during the early modern period as Aristotelianism fell out of favor.

Virtue ethics returned to some prominence in philosophical thought during the mid-20th century, and is one of three dominant approaches to normative ethics,

the other two being deontology (the study of obligation and duty) and consequentialism (the theory that moral thinking is entirely about the costs and benefits of our actions).

Although concern for virtue appears in several different philosophical traditions, from the Chinese Confucian to other Eastern examples, in the West the roots of the tradition lie in the works of Plato and Aristotle. The tradition’s key concepts derive from ancient Greek philosophy.

These concepts include arête (excellence), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom), and eudaimonia (flourishing, sometimes translated as happiness). Can we revive them?

The term itself, “virtue ethics,” is actually of fairly recent vintage. It has come to be something of an umbrella term that encompasses a number of different theories. Initially, virtue ethics was characterized as a movement focusing on the central role of character imbued by virtue (which means “moral excellence” in Latin) in moral philosophy.

In the darkest hours, sometimes the human will can bend back to its best frame of reference—to that which has carried it down the centuries and sustained all human flourishing. This is such a time and more than ever we need a pause and a turn, a complete about-face, so as to rediscover and practice the original and best virtues.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including The Plot to Destroy Trump and appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. This article appears through the kind courtesy of American Greatness.

The featured image shows, “The Seven Virtues,” by Francesco Pesellino and his workshop, painted ca. 1450.