What Is a “New Jacobin”? Same As The Old Jacobins But They’re Not French

 You Aren’t Patriotic If You Are Anti-War

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “What this guy is basically saying is that you and I are chicken hawks.  In other words, we want all these guys to go off and fight our wars for us, but we’re too big of a sissy to actually go and enlist.  Nothing could be further from the truth, from my point of view.  Number one, I don’t want anyone going off and fighting wars for me.  As a matter of fact, I want the troops from overseas recalled, all of them.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  What this guy is basically saying is that you and I are chicken hawks.  In other words, we want all these guys to go off and fight our wars for us, but we’re too big of a sissy to actually go and enlist.  Nothing could be further from the truth, from my point of view.  Number one, I don’t want anyone going off and fighting wars for me.  As a matter of fact, I want the troops from overseas recalled, all of them.  Bring them all back right now, tomorrow morning.  Stop it today.  We can’t afford it anyway.  End the empire.  You can maintain the Navy, fine.  It’s in the Constitution.  I don’t have a problem with it.  As a matter of fact, I think it’s needed.  The rest of it, you draw it down.  Should an armed conflict be necessary, then we will take our plow shares, melt them down, and beat them into swords.

But you’d rather call people like me and Eric chicken hawks.  Because we’ve never served, that means we can’t comment.  Oh, but Eric and I are arrogant and elitist.  “Your elitist condescension towards veterans, enlisted in particular, is nauseating.”  I don’t have any condescension towards the enlisted men, sir.  As a matter of fact, I broke some bread with some on Saturday evening last.  “Why shouldn’t service members gain something for their service?”  Here’s the point, Eric.  By you saying the recruiters were out offering financial incentives, which is not what you thought we had a standing army for, that makes you, A, a chicken hawk, and now, you don’t want them to be paid.

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Eric:  No, I want them to be paid, that’s fine.  I have many friends who are in the military.  It’s not anything on them.  I’m just saying we have to question whether or not, A, is it okay for us to do that?  B, can we afford it?  It’s showing more and more that no, we can’t.  Sorry for that.  I didn’t mean any offense or anything.  I have the utmost respect for anybody in the military.  I’m not questioning, saying people in the military today are doing it only for the money.  All I’m saying is that we have to look at: What are the reasons why we’re bringing people in?  We need to question the reasons why we need more people in the military.

Mike:  Yeah, but he didn’t hear that part, so he’s only going on what my conversation was with the caller at the top of the last hour.

[private FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK|FP-Yearly-So76]

Then we are instructed that you and I loser, “loud military-haters that you are” — this is just the same argument, by the way, the same exact argument that came up on Friday over the discussion of the incorporation of the Second Amendment when I railed against the California decision, because that’s what it did.  I was accused of being a socialist.  I was accused of being a gun grabber.  I’m accused of being someone that doesn’t believe in self-defense.  That didn’t have anything to do with the conversation, none, zero.  “I enjoyed listening to your show when I could until today.  I’m not asking for an apology because I feel you said what you mean and are entitled to your opinion, but I would no longer count myself as a listener.”  Good luck with that, and good luck with what I hope is a rapidly diminishing audience.  All thirteen of you people on hold need to hang up now, according to Nick R., because that line of BS, that disrespectful, unpatriotic garbage sludge, elitist garbage sludge that was served up in hour number two means you are running for the exits.

Nick, thanks for the comments.  I suggest next time you may want to listen to the hour that preceded, but then again, I don’t think that you would get it, Nick, because you are an idolatrist.  You have chosen the idolatry of your national empire of the American Church over the idolatry or the love of — idolatry is not love.  It’s fake love.  It’s worship.  Love of country, as we talked about during the citizen soldier discussions two weeks ago — perhaps you missed those, Nick — love of country is loving what your country is, not what it can become if it can build better bombs and bigger tanks and larger aircraft carriers and storm the barriers and ramparts of any country on the face of the Earth.  I don’t love my country Louisiana for that.  I love it because I was born here.  I love it because my kids are being raised here.  I love it because of the people that call themselves Louisianans.  I don’t love its government.  I don’t love the edifice that is the State.  That’s the flaw in the thinking.

As a matter of fact, Nick, the patriot is the first one, not the elitist, the patriot is the first one that raises his hand and says: Hey, do we really need an army that big, guys?  I’m not saying, I’m just saying, do we really need to be in 197 countries?  Do we really need to be protecting the South Korean border?  The South Koreans are wealthier than we are, or on the ascendency.  Why don’t they protect their own darn border?  Do we really need to be micromanaging the affairs of the Pacific Rim?  Are the Germans going to hook up with the Italians and invade France again?  Do we really need to be in Germany anymore?  The list goes on and on and on.  But don’t question the idolatry of our national religion, the Church of the American Empire.  Don’t question that, because then you’re an elitist snob.  [mocking] “You wouldn’t know what it was like to get into a uniform if you tried.”

It used to be, once upon a time, the citizen soldier that never wanted to ever have to get into a uniform unless it was existential, unless he was actually called upon to go and stem a flood that had begun, unless he was called upon to enter service because the regulars were coming.  You can choose to believe what you think the interpretation of today’s program is.  Believe whatever you want, sir.  I will probably never be able to convince you otherwise as long as you’re on your knees, as long as you’re reading from the holy text that the 3×5 index card of thought has taught you to read from.  I won’t be able to convince you of that.  Only you can do that.

Just remember, we were once, our ancestors, all of us, were republicans.  We were citizens of republics.  Virginia was too large to be governed by Richmond.  What did it do?  It told Kentucky to secede.  You’re right, guys.  God bless you, Godspeed, go.  You’re right, too big of a land mass to be governed by one.  The Dakotas, too big to be governed by one.  Maine didn’t want to be governed by Boston any longer.  The list goes on and on and on.  Why?  Because we were all once republicans.  Being a republican, it seems to me you have to be for what Plato described as the republic, and what Aristotle defined as the republic.  When it gets too large to be governed by the people who are intimately governed, then it’s no longer a republic.  Aristotle couldn’t even have imagined in his day a state, a nation, until, of course, they were invaded by the Persian Empire.  Godspeed to you, sir.  We wish you well.

Eric:  It’s just odd to me that veterans can come back over here and we give them free stadium tickets and all that other stuff, will have the commercials of people clapping in the airports.  That’s all well and good.  Then we can have this disdain and hatred and volatility towards any government employee who we feel is unnecessary.  They’re doing the same thing.  Sure, their job is not as dangerous, but they get offered a job, probably a healthy sum that will help them move on and help them invest in their future.  They take the money.  Maybe they believe in what they’re doing, maybe they don’t, but either way, we’re paying them off.  I don’t understand why there’s all this disdain for the government employee, but these soldiers, they’re untouchable.  We can’t question why they’re in there at all.  We have to say this is completely different.

Mike:  Now do you see why the conservative is not a conservative any longer?  Now do you see why the State remains that unresponsive and impregnable fortress that it is?  Look at what it’s done.  It’s made worshippers, it’s made protectors, it’s made an entire class of people that will defend its every machination, its every expense, and its every action.  They will do so and then will wrap themselves in the flag and call themselves patriots.  I’m sure many of them are.  I’m sure most of them are.  You’re looking at the wrong definition of the term patriot then.

I need to get out Claes Ryn’s The New Jacobinism.  You’re mistaking patriotism for Jacobinism.  Chapter Seven of The New Jacobinism:

[reading]

. . . but it is patriotism even less. [Mike: He’s talking about international aggression.]

As already explained, the patriot’s pride of country is indistinguishable from moral self-restraint and a sense of the flaws of his own country. The new Jacobinism is not exactly uncritical of today’s American democracy. Bloom and others complain that is it too relativistic and insufficiently faithful to the principles of its own “Founding.” It should be noted, however, that since those principles are “rational and everywhere applicable” and thus monopolistic, greater dedication to American principles would increase, not reduce, the wish of Americans to dictate terms to others.

Speaking of the United States and its principles as models for all peoples is today a recurring theme in some American intellectual and political circles. Sometimes the will to power behind this refrain is barely able to keep up ideological appearances. Writes Ben Wattenberg, “It’s pretty clear what the global community need: probably a top cop, but surely a powerful global organizer. Somebody’s got to do it. We’re the only ones who can.” Advocating a “visionary” American foreign policy, Wattenberg proclaims: “The idea of spreading democratic and American values around the world is visionary.” With moralistic righteousness he adds, “It’s the right thing to do.”

The New Jacobins are justifying a grasp for power in the midst of glaring moral, intellectual and cultural problems in the Western world. Investing today’s democracy with a world-wide moral mission signifies either a slipping hold on reality or a cynical exploitation of Western moods of escapism. The New Jacobins present their ideology as a moral response to the crisis of “liberalism” and relativism, but it is likely to hasten rather than slow the already advanced deterioration of constitutional democracy.

[end reading]

Mike:  That was The New Jacobinism: America as Revolutionary State by Claes G. Ryn.  Find it in the library widget at the bottom of any story at MikeChurch.com.  It’s the easiest way to find it.  Chad in Florida is next.  Hello, Chad, how you doing?

Caller Chad:  Pretty good, Mike, how are you?

Mike:  I’m fine, sir, thank you very much.

Caller Chad:  As one of the filthy, filthy enlisted men that you apparently offended, I want to assure you that I take no offense to what you said.  I get the concept behind what you said.

Mike:  Thank you.  That’s refreshing to hear.  You see there, Eric, Chad didn’t run to the exit.

Caller Chad:  One of the biggest things is that people who serve in the military, because they find their service to be so honorable, they have a hard time distinguishing the honor of service from the not-necessarily-pure motivations of the State when they ask you to perform that service.

Mike:  Good point.

Caller Chad:  Simply declaring self-righteousness or self-righteousness in national policy doesn’t make it so.  We lose sight of that.  A standing army inherently has those blinders built into it.

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Mike:  And a standing army, as George Mason said, historically speaking, is always a threat to liberty, not just the liberty of the people that are going to be bombed back into the stone ages, but the liberty of the people that are forced then to take their plowshares and plow a significant portion of their land to support the standing army.  But don’t tell that to the Jacobin, Chad.  [mocking] “What, I don’t deserve to get paid for what I’m doing?”  Nobody said that, dude.  There’s a boat that just sailed, bro, and you’re still on the docks.  You know what I should tell those guys, Chad?  Here’s what we should tell them: You know what your problem is, sir?  You got your hands all up in the Kool-Aid and you don’t even know what flavor it is.

Mike has been talking about many different ways to deal with the American Union & it’s attack dog, the “Federal” government –There’s Article V & Nullification too

Caller Chad:  That’s a true statement.  Anybody who can’t look at military culture and say there are a whole lot of Kool-Aid drinkers walking the face of this planet is wrong.  I’ve been doing this 17 years.  There are plenty of folks that can’t distinguish between — at the end of the day, you talk about dependency in the military, of course there’s dependency of the military.  It is an instrument of the State.  Dependency is cultivated for political reliability.  That’s what it’s there for.

End Mike Church Show Transcript