ALEC works the legislative branch while The Federalist Society works the judicial branch. Many of their backers and donors are the same.
As Robert notes:
“For me the standout detail from the above excerpt that easily and readily applies to the current crop of MAGA Congresspersons is the fact that “Put simply, ALEC’s work makes lawmaking easier, particularly for lawmakers who are relatively inexperienced or who work in less professionalized legislatures.” One of my first thoughts when I read that sentence is how the election of many MAGA politicians who are clearly and obviously of lower intellectual capabilities are in all likelihood the preferred choice of legislator for the hidden beneficiaries behind so much of the push to create a Christian nationalist society.”
My observation is this political guidance modus operandi has been a guiding principle of the religious-conservative right for decades. School boards, county judges, county supervisors, state legislatures, state level political appointees - These bottom up positions are ripe for candidates with a cultivated stealth hidden agenda. Gives a whole new meaning to Head Start.
Excellent research. A lot to unpack and digest. I had to go back and reread the Politico October 11 article on Leo again. Talk about a tangled web of people and organizations, the planning and organization of which is mind boggling. I hate to admit it, but with the people and individual and corporate backers behind groups like ALEC, The Federalist Society, and The Heritage Foundation the far right movement conservatives are well ahead of the rest of us.
This last part from that ProPublica article has stayed with me ever since I read it. And it is to me a signal part of the true underlying problem which I have yet to sit down and write about, but will be definitely being doing soon.
_______________________
Through it all, Leo has remained defiant. His vision goes beyond a judiciary stocked with Federalist Society conservatives. It is of a country guided by higher principles. “That’s not theocracy,” he recently told a conservative Christian website. “That’s just natural law. That’s just the natural order of things. It’s how we and the world are wired.”
“he recently told a conservative Christian website. “That’s just natural law.”
Leo is going to fight for that bit of theology and philosophy, because he’s not the first to claim jurisdiction over ‘natural law’. But I suspect he means Christian theology natural law as in Paul's Epistle to the Romans and St. Augustine of Hippo. We’re in trouble with the whole idea that biblical law trumps any man written federal or state law.
Other natural laws include:
The Natural Law Party - In the 1990’s through 2004 there was the Natural Law Party in the United States, Canada and several other countries. As a political party, “The Natural Law Party advocates using the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi program as tools to enliven natural law and reduce or eliminate problems in society.” It continues in India and at the local level in the United States. [1]
Natural Law in Stoic Philosophy - “The Stoic natural law was indifferent to either the natural or divine source of the law: the Stoics asserted the existence of a rational and purposeful order to the universe, and the means by which a rational being lived in accordance with this order was the natural law, which inspired actions that accorded with virtue.”
“The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics. The rise of natural law as a universal system coincided with the rise of large empires and kingdoms in the Greek world.” [2]
Last time I checked the Greeks and Romans had different gods than MAGA Mike Johnson.
Then there’s natural law in Buddhism. [3] [4]
I get a little tired of dogmatic individuals that think their version of something is the only right version.
Thank you. Your articles are excellent and enlightening and need a wider audience to derail decades of Leo/MAGA track laying in the few months prior to the 2024 election cycle.
I just read the Hartman Report discussion about the Boston Tea Party as a rebellious action against the East India Company’s monopolies as merely the trigger for the 1776 Revolution. Seems we’re revisiting the same monopolistic circumstances again and once again have limited tools. Like boiling frogs we are.
I will have to read that particular Hartman Report. As for me I am currently taking an intuitive deep dive into the "Substackers against Nazis" & "Substack shouldn’t decide what we read" debate, if it can be called that.
I am finding myself getting into some rather curious rabbit holes. I am planning on writing something about my findings, hopefully to be published sometime in the next few days.
Regarding your look into Substack’s algorithmic machinations, had you not mentioned it I would have no awareness that they were directing and/or “hiding” feeds. I have a vague recollection that “preferences” were identified when I registered for the site, but it never occurred to me that pro-Nazi or white Christofascist threads would or would not included. That they are is curious.
Does Substack intend to be an “open” forum for all subject matter possibly excluding pornography? If so, it seems having an index of some kind would be appropriate.
For me, however, folks who promote authoritarian or theocratic domination philosophies should not have a voice anywhere.
I wholeheartedly agree with your concluding sentence.
As for the question of what exactly Substack intends to be, that is something that I have been looking into with reference to my last reply to you.
From my simple investigation so far it would appear that content moderation problems are not new to the founders of Substack, as prior to creating Substack the three co-founders all worked at "Kik Interactive" which as a platform was known to have had significant moderation problems.
As for what Substack is seeking to become in the grand scheme of things it would seem to me, at this point in my research, that as a business it is trying to be both a semi-neutral platform that acts as a middle-service-provider to both publishers and readers, which would be inline with its initial operating model, and now with the advent of "notes" and the Substack "Reader App" it would seem to be attempting to also act as a social media platform, that once again operates in a semi-neutral manner. From what I can determine it might be working its way towards an unstated goal of becoming its own self-contained ecosystem.
Anyway those are just my unrefined perspectives; as it is I am finding out quite a bit out about the website as a whole and some of what I have read has actually made me pause and question many of my own preconceptions about it.
The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement is a historical speech given by Eric Heubeck in July 2001. It needs to be highlighted for its importance as the playbook for Christian Nationalist leaders.
The paragraph below is only one example of why this speech needs to become part of the conversation.
"It is not enough to say that conservative philosophy is more sensible than that of the Left. If we leave it at that, we will only attract “sensible” people to our movement. But “sensible” people do not go to the barricades, they do not make great sacrifices for a movement. And the experience of the conservative movement has shown this to be the case. We need more people with fire in the belly, and we need a message that attracts those kinds of people. As Plato said, “madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.” We should keep this in mind if we expect our people to make superhuman sacrifices for the movement. We must reframe this struggle as a moral struggle, as a transcendent struggle, as a struggle between good and evil. And we must be prepared to explain why this is so. We must provide the evidence needed to prove this using images and simple terms. Putting the debate in terms of mere freedom, the “leave us alone” mentality, does not inspire apocalyptic fervor."
More recent publications on the New Traditionalist Movement.
War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum. (Teitelbaum spent hours with Steve Bannon and other Traditionalists.)
The American Enterprise Institute has a white paper on the New Traditionalists. Colin Dueck, author (May 29, 2020)
ALEC works the legislative branch while The Federalist Society works the judicial branch. Many of their backers and donors are the same.
As Robert notes:
“For me the standout detail from the above excerpt that easily and readily applies to the current crop of MAGA Congresspersons is the fact that “Put simply, ALEC’s work makes lawmaking easier, particularly for lawmakers who are relatively inexperienced or who work in less professionalized legislatures.” One of my first thoughts when I read that sentence is how the election of many MAGA politicians who are clearly and obviously of lower intellectual capabilities are in all likelihood the preferred choice of legislator for the hidden beneficiaries behind so much of the push to create a Christian nationalist society.”
My observation is this political guidance modus operandi has been a guiding principle of the religious-conservative right for decades. School boards, county judges, county supervisors, state legislatures, state level political appointees - These bottom up positions are ripe for candidates with a cultivated stealth hidden agenda. Gives a whole new meaning to Head Start.
Well summarized!
Excellent research. A lot to unpack and digest. I had to go back and reread the Politico October 11 article on Leo again. Talk about a tangled web of people and organizations, the planning and organization of which is mind boggling. I hate to admit it, but with the people and individual and corporate backers behind groups like ALEC, The Federalist Society, and The Heritage Foundation the far right movement conservatives are well ahead of the rest of us.
This last part from that ProPublica article has stayed with me ever since I read it. And it is to me a signal part of the true underlying problem which I have yet to sit down and write about, but will be definitely being doing soon.
_______________________
Through it all, Leo has remained defiant. His vision goes beyond a judiciary stocked with Federalist Society conservatives. It is of a country guided by higher principles. “That’s not theocracy,” he recently told a conservative Christian website. “That’s just natural law. That’s just the natural order of things. It’s how we and the world are wired.”
“he recently told a conservative Christian website. “That’s just natural law.”
Leo is going to fight for that bit of theology and philosophy, because he’s not the first to claim jurisdiction over ‘natural law’. But I suspect he means Christian theology natural law as in Paul's Epistle to the Romans and St. Augustine of Hippo. We’re in trouble with the whole idea that biblical law trumps any man written federal or state law.
Other natural laws include:
The Natural Law Party - In the 1990’s through 2004 there was the Natural Law Party in the United States, Canada and several other countries. As a political party, “The Natural Law Party advocates using the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi program as tools to enliven natural law and reduce or eliminate problems in society.” It continues in India and at the local level in the United States. [1]
Natural Law in Stoic Philosophy - “The Stoic natural law was indifferent to either the natural or divine source of the law: the Stoics asserted the existence of a rational and purposeful order to the universe, and the means by which a rational being lived in accordance with this order was the natural law, which inspired actions that accorded with virtue.”
“The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics. The rise of natural law as a universal system coincided with the rise of large empires and kingdoms in the Greek world.” [2]
Last time I checked the Greeks and Romans had different gods than MAGA Mike Johnson.
Then there’s natural law in Buddhism. [3] [4]
I get a little tired of dogmatic individuals that think their version of something is the only right version.
[1]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Law_Party#:~:text=The%20Natural%20Law%20Party%20advocates,or%20eliminate%20problems%20in%20society.&text=Prominent%20candidates%20included%20John%20Hagelin,of%20Rosedale%2C%20Toronto%2C%20Canada.
[2]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law#:~:text=Natural%20law%20first%20appeared%20among,live%20in%20accordance%20with%20nature.
[3]. https://www.dalailama.com/messages/environment/buddhist-concept-of-nature#:~:text=In%20order%20to%20survive%20you,nature's%20law%2C%20that%20is%20nature.
[4]. https://www.dailyzen.com/journal/buddhism-is-natural-truth/
And with regards to the far right movement being well ahead of us, you are quite right.
Thank you. Your articles are excellent and enlightening and need a wider audience to derail decades of Leo/MAGA track laying in the few months prior to the 2024 election cycle.
Indeed, even if I gained a very large following it would still be challenging to derail those decades of Democratic undermining.
Is there a realistic solution?
I just read the Hartman Report discussion about the Boston Tea Party as a rebellious action against the East India Company’s monopolies as merely the trigger for the 1776 Revolution. Seems we’re revisiting the same monopolistic circumstances again and once again have limited tools. Like boiling frogs we are.
I will have to read that particular Hartman Report. As for me I am currently taking an intuitive deep dive into the "Substackers against Nazis" & "Substack shouldn’t decide what we read" debate, if it can be called that.
I am finding myself getting into some rather curious rabbit holes. I am planning on writing something about my findings, hopefully to be published sometime in the next few days.
Regarding your look into Substack’s algorithmic machinations, had you not mentioned it I would have no awareness that they were directing and/or “hiding” feeds. I have a vague recollection that “preferences” were identified when I registered for the site, but it never occurred to me that pro-Nazi or white Christofascist threads would or would not included. That they are is curious.
Does Substack intend to be an “open” forum for all subject matter possibly excluding pornography? If so, it seems having an index of some kind would be appropriate.
For me, however, folks who promote authoritarian or theocratic domination philosophies should not have a voice anywhere.
I wholeheartedly agree with your concluding sentence.
As for the question of what exactly Substack intends to be, that is something that I have been looking into with reference to my last reply to you.
From my simple investigation so far it would appear that content moderation problems are not new to the founders of Substack, as prior to creating Substack the three co-founders all worked at "Kik Interactive" which as a platform was known to have had significant moderation problems.
As for what Substack is seeking to become in the grand scheme of things it would seem to me, at this point in my research, that as a business it is trying to be both a semi-neutral platform that acts as a middle-service-provider to both publishers and readers, which would be inline with its initial operating model, and now with the advent of "notes" and the Substack "Reader App" it would seem to be attempting to also act as a social media platform, that once again operates in a semi-neutral manner. From what I can determine it might be working its way towards an unstated goal of becoming its own self-contained ecosystem.
Anyway those are just my unrefined perspectives; as it is I am finding out quite a bit out about the website as a whole and some of what I have read has actually made me pause and question many of my own preconceptions about it.
Thanks!
The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement is a historical speech given by Eric Heubeck in July 2001. It needs to be highlighted for its importance as the playbook for Christian Nationalist leaders.
The paragraph below is only one example of why this speech needs to become part of the conversation.
"It is not enough to say that conservative philosophy is more sensible than that of the Left. If we leave it at that, we will only attract “sensible” people to our movement. But “sensible” people do not go to the barricades, they do not make great sacrifices for a movement. And the experience of the conservative movement has shown this to be the case. We need more people with fire in the belly, and we need a message that attracts those kinds of people. As Plato said, “madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.” We should keep this in mind if we expect our people to make superhuman sacrifices for the movement. We must reframe this struggle as a moral struggle, as a transcendent struggle, as a struggle between good and evil. And we must be prepared to explain why this is so. We must provide the evidence needed to prove this using images and simple terms. Putting the debate in terms of mere freedom, the “leave us alone” mentality, does not inspire apocalyptic fervor."
https://attackthesystem.com/2013/02/10/the-integration-of-theory-and-practice-a-program-for-the-new-traditionalist-movement/
More recent publications on the New Traditionalist Movement.
War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum. (Teitelbaum spent hours with Steve Bannon and other Traditionalists.)
The American Enterprise Institute has a white paper on the New Traditionalists. Colin Dueck, author (May 29, 2020)
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-new-traditionalists/
Thank you so very much for bringing this to my attention. There appear to be many important connections here to investigate.