James Monroe.
And, yes, we're still not on to the Agrarian finale in this series. That's because we have one more important topic to consider first.
Politics.
If you read distributists' social media, and you probably don't, you'll see that some people have the namby pamby idea that if we all just act locally everything will fall in line. While people should act locally, that's a bunch of crap.
What these people don't realize is that politically, we're a corporate capitalist society, and we are where we are right now, in large part due to that. Corporations are a creature of the state, not of nature, and exists as a legal fiction because the state says they do. This is deemed, in our imaginations, to be necessarily because, . . . well it is.
Or rather, it's deemed to be necessary as we believe we need every more consolidation and economies of scale.
We really don't, and in the end, it serves just itself. We do need some large entities, particularly in manufacturing, which would actually bring us back to the original allowance for corporate structure, which was quite limited. Early in US history, most corporations were banned from being created.
Legally, they would not need to be banned now, but simply not allowed to form except for actual needs. And when very large, the Theodore Roosevelt proposal that they be treated like public utilities, or alternatively some percentage of their stock or membership would vest in their employees, would result in remedying much of the ills that they've created.
Likewise, eliminating the absurd idea that they can use their money for influence in politics could and should be addressed.
Which would require changes in the law.
And that takes us back to politics.
Nearly every living American, and Canadian for that matter, would agree that a major portion of the problems their nations face today are ones manufactured by politics. The current economic order, as noted, is politically vested.
The United States has slid into a political decline of epic proportions, and its noteworthy that this came about after Ronald Reagan attacked and destroyed the post 1932 economic order which provided for an amplified type of American System in which there was, in fact, a great deal of involvement in the economy and the affairs of corporations, as well as a hefty income tax on the wealth following the country's entry into World War Two. It's never been the case, of course, that there was a trouble free political era although interestingly, there was a political era which is recalled as The Era of Good Feelings due to its lack of political strife.
That era lasted a mere decade, from 1815 to 1825, but it's instructive.
The Era of Good Feelings came about after the War of 1812, which was a war that not only caused internal strife, but which risked the dissolution of the nation. Following the war the Federalist Party collapsed thereby ending the bitter disputes that had characterized its fights with the more dominant Democratic-Republican Party.. . . . huh. . .
Anyhow, President James Monroe downplayed partisan affiliation in his nominations, with the ultimate goal of affecting national unity and eliminating political parties altogether.
Borrowing a line from the Those Were the Days theme song of All In the Family, "Mister we could use a man like James Monroe again".
Political parties have had a long and honorable history in politics. They've also had a long and destructive one. Much of their role depends upon the era. In our era, for a variety of reasons, they are now at the hyper destructive level.
They are, we would note, uniquely subject to the influence of money, and the fringe, which itself is savvy to the influence of money. And money, now matter where it originates from, tends to concentrate uphill if allowed to, and it ultimately tends to disregard the local.
"All politics is local" is the phrase that's famously attached to U.S. politics, but as early as 1968, according to Andrew Gelman, that's declined, and I agree with his observation. Nowhere is that more evident than Wyoming.
In Wyoming both the Republican and the Democratic Party used to be focused on matters that were very local, which is why both parties embraced in varying degrees, The Land Ethic, and both parties, in varying degrees, embraced agriculture. It explains why in the politics of the 70s and 80s the major economic driver of the state, the oil and gas industry, actually had much less influence than it does now.
Things were definitely changing by the 1980s, with money, the love of which is the root of all evil, being a primary driver. Beyond that, however, technology played a role. The consolidation of industry meant that employers once headquartered in Casper, for instance, moved first to Denver, then to Houston, or were even located in Norway. As the love of money is the root of all evil, and the fear of being poor a major personal motivator, concern for much that was local was increasingly lost.
The increasing broad scope of the economy, moreover, meant that there were economic relocations of people who had very little connection with the land and their state. Today's local Freedom Caucus in the legislature, heavily represented by those whose formative years were out of state, is a primary example in the state. Malevolent politics out of the south and the Rust Belt entered the state and are battled out in our legislature even though they have little to do with local culture, lands or ethics.
Moreover, since 1968 the Democratic Party has gone increasingly leftward, driven at first by the impacts of the 1960s and then by its left leaning elements. It in turn became anti-democratic, relying on the Supreme Court to force upon the nation unwanted social change, until it suddenly couldn't rely on the Court anymore, at which time it rediscovered democracy. At the same time Southern and Rust Belt Populists, brought into the Republican Party by Ronald Reagan, eventually took it over and are now fanatically devoted to anti-democratic mogul, Donald Trump, whose real values, other than the love of money and a certain sort of female appearance, is unknown, none of which maters to his fanatic base as they apply the FĂ¼hrerprinzip to his imagined wishes and he responds.
We know, accordingly, have a Congress that's completely incapable of doing anything other than banning TikTok.
Distributism by design, and Agrarianism by social reference, both apply Catholic Social Teaching, one intentionally and one essentially as it was already doing that before Catholic Social Teaching was defined. As we've discussed elsewhere, Catholic Social Teaching applies the doctrines of Human Dignity, Solidarity and Subsidiarity. Solidarity, as Pope John Paul II describe it In Sollicitudo rei socialis, is not “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of others. It is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”. Subsidiarity provides that that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.
We are a long ways from all of that, right now.
Politically, we're in a national political era that is violently opposed to solidarity and subsidiarity. Supposed national issues and imagined remote conspiracies, dreamt up by political parties, swamp real local issues. Global issues, in contract, which require a competent national authority, or even international authority, to deal with, cannot get attention as the masses are distracted by buffoons acting like Howler Monkeys.
Destroying the parties would serve all of this. And that's a lot easier to do than might be supposed.
And more difficult.
Money makes it quite difficult, in fact. But it can be done.
The easiest way to attack this problem is to remove political parties as quasi official state agencies, which right now the GOP and Democratic Party are. Both parties have secured, in many states, state funded elections which masquerade as "primary elections" but which are actually party elections. There's utterly no reason whatsoever that the State of Wyoming, for example, should fund an internal Republican election, or a Democratic one.
Primary elections are quite useful, but not in the fashion that most state's have them. A useful example is Alaska's, whose system was recently proposed for Wyoming, but which was not accepted (no surprise). Interestingly, given as the state's two actual political parties right now are the Trumpites and the Republican remnants, this a particularly good, and perhaps uniquely opportune, time to go to this system. And that system disregard party affiliations.
Basically, in that type of election, the top two vote getters in the primary go on to the general election irrespective of party. There doesn't need to be any voter party affiliation. The public just weeds the number of candidates down.
That is in fact how the system works here already, and in many places for local elections. But it should be adopted for all elections. If it was, the system would be much different.
For example, in the last House Race, Harriet Hageman defeated Lynette Grey Bull, taking 132,206 votes to Gray Bull's 47,250. Given the nature of the race, FWIW, Gray Bull did much better than people like to imagine, taking 25% of the vote in an overwhelmingly Republican state. Incumbent Lynn Cheney was knocked out of the race in the primary, being punished for telling the truth about Đ”Đ¾Đ½Đ°Đ»ÑŒĐ´ "The Insurrectionist" Trump. But an interesting thing happens if you look at the GOP primary.
In that race, Harriet Hageman took 113,079 votes, for 66% of the vote, and Cheney took 49,339, for 29%. Some hard right candidates took the minor balance. Grey Bull won in the primary with just 4,500 votes, however.
I'd also note here that Distributism in and of itself would have an impact on elections, as it would have a levelling effect on the money aspect of politics. Consider this article by former Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau:
A person could ask, I suppose, of how this is an example, but it is.
Back to the Gray v. Nethercott race, Ms. Nethercott is a lawyer in a regional law firm. That's not distributist as I'd have it, as I'd provide that firms really ought to be local, as I discussed in yesterday's riveting installment. But it is a regional law firm and depending upon its business model, she's likely responsible for what she brings in individually. Indeed, the claim made during the race that she wanted the job of Secretary of State for a raise income was likely absurd.
But the thing here is that Nethercott, as explained by Lubnau, raised a total of $369,933, of which $304,503 were from individual donations. That's a lot to spend for that office, but it was mostly donated by her supporters.
In contrast, Jan Charles Gray, Chuck Gray's father donated a total of $700,000 to Chuck Gray’s campaign, Chuck Gray donated $10,000 to his own campaign and others donated $25,994.
$700,000 is a shocking amount for that office, but beyond that, what it shows is that Nethercott's supporters vastly out contributed Gray's, except for Gray's father. In a distributist society, it certainly wouldn't be impossible to amass $700,000 in surplus cash for such an endeavor, but it would frankly be much more difficult.
To conclude, no political system is going to convert people into saints. But it's hard to whip people into a frenzy who are your friends and neighbors than it does people who are remote. And its harder to serve the interest of money if the money is more widely distributed. Put another way, it's harder to tell 50 small business owners that that Bobo down in Colorado knows what she's talking about, than 50 people who depend on somebody else for a livelihood a myth.
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