Cancelling the Grand Old Party (GOP) was the mission of last week’s “Hard Truth” podcast, undertaken by your columnist, her partner, David Vance, and guest Jack Kerwick (introduced here). And on good grounds. The Republican Party has never stood up for you, will never stand up for you and is not going to do what it takes. Past is prologue.

As Dr. Boyd Cathey has observed, the “party which never conserves anything” had been exposed as such as far back as 1875. “The great Southern author, Robert Lewis Dabney, writing a decade after the end of the War Between the States … expressed presciently this tendency of dominant, post-war Northern conservatism”:

The history of the Republican Party is “that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.”

A point of philosophy arises. From the progressive perspective, society—civil and state—are what shape the human being and account for his conduct. To the extent our world is filled with perverts, grifters, and deviants—they were propelled into misbehavior by societal forces often beyond their control. Or, so goes progressive-style social determinism.

Libertarians, for their part, also often err on the side of a structurally similar social determinism. The State, their reasoning goes, accounts, for the most, for deviance in society. Remove the State and you remove the incentives for people to behave badly.

This Hebrew takes the biblical view tested by time. It is that, as stated in Genesis 8:21 (with thanks to my editors), the instinct of man is evil from his youth. (Or, wackily mistranslated: “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”)

What we observe in the political landscape is a function and a reflection of human nature, acting in aggregate. Over and above the idea that we get the government that we deserve is the devastating reality that this government doesn’t stand apart from us. It is us.

Stated by a reader on American Greatness, “We are culturally rotten…as a country and a people…sick to the core. Without shame, without humility, without prudence or common sense.”

In the aggregate, this is probably true. We evince deep, all-engulfing systemic rot, manifested in public and personal life.

Some questions, however, lingered. Were we and our guest, Dr. Kerwick, being theoretical purists, rejecting or refusing to engage with the political reality as it is? Perhaps conservatives should just put up and shut up about the Only Game in Town? Succinctly put by an Unz Review reader:

“Yup! The Republicans suck. But the Democrats want to kill me.”

To that, David provided the perfectly plain answer, as is his wont. WATCH. So did the late Andrew Breitbart of blessed memory. WATCH AND SUBSCRIBE.

Ilana Mercer

Ideology is political religion, said the conservative sage Russell Kirk.

And what is the defining dogma of the political religion, or ideology, of America in 2022?

Is it not that, “All men are created equal”?

Yet, as with every religion, a basic question needs first to be asked and answered about this defining dogma of liberal ideology.

Is it true? Are all men truly created equal? Are all races and ethnic groups equal? Are men and women equal? Are all religions equal? Or do we simply agree to accept that as true — and treat them all equally?

All Americans, we agree, have the same God-given rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the same constitutional rights in the Bill of Rights, and the same civil rights, enshrined in federal law.

But where is the historic, scientific or empirical proof of the defining dogma of American democracy that “all men are created equal”?

Thomas Jefferson, the statesman who immortalized the words, did not believe in equality, let alone equity. How he lived his life testifies to this disbelief.

When he wrote the Declaration of Independence that contained the famous words, Jefferson was a slave owner. In that document, he speaks of the British as “brethren” connected to us by “ties of our common kindred,” ties of blood.

But not all of those fighting against us were the equals of the British.

There were, Jefferson wrote, those “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

In an 1815 letter to John Adams, Jefferson celebrated “a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents … The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.”

Jefferson was an aristocrat, not a democrat.

Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but did not believe in racial or social equality. Though he cited Jefferson’s “all men are created equal” at Gettysburg, he had conceded in an 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas that, “We cannot, then, make them equals,” adding that the white race in America should retain the superior position.

With the Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating public schools in 1954, and the civil rights acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968, a national effort was undertaken to bring about the social and political equality that Jefferson’s words of 1776 seemed to promise but failed to deliver.

At Howard University in 1965, Lyndon Johnson took the next step, declaring: “Freedom is not enough … We seek … not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”

Yet, over half a century after the civil rights revolution, incomes and wealth are not equal. Nor is there equal representation in professions like law, medicine and higher education.

President Joe Biden’s people have pledged to Black America that they will mandate and deliver that equality of results. If equity does not now exist, the Biden administration will impose it.

And why not?

If all men (and women) are created equal, the most reasonable explanation for a consistent inequality of riches and rewards between men and women, and black and white, is that the game has been rigged. An inequality of riches and rewards exists because “systematic racism” coexists in American society alongside “white privilege.”

The remedy is also clear. As Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” told The New York Times’ Ezra Klein: “Racist policies are defined as any policy that leads to racial inequity … intent of the policymaker doesn’t matter. It’s all about the fundamental outcome.”

Thus, a policy that ensures an equal place at the starting line but consistently fails to deliver an equal place at the finish line is, de facto, racist.

If Asian and black kids start kindergarten in the same class, and Asian kids in 12th grade are studying calculus while most black kids are still trying to master algebra, racism alone, by Kendi’s rule, can explain such a regular result.

The solution to persistent inequality?

Mandate equity; mandate equality of results; mandate equal rewards for black and white. Compel the government to produce policies that deliver an equality of results.

But what if inequalities have another explanation?

What if Asian Americans are naturally superior in mathematics?

What if an inequity of rewards in society is predominantly a result of an inequality of talents and abilities?

What if it is more true to say that, based on human experience, no two men were ever created equal, than to say all men are created equal?

As Kirk said, ideology is political religion.

What we witness today is the refusal of true believers in egalitarian ideology to accept that their core doctrine may not only not be true, but may be demonstrably false.

What we are witnessing in America is how true believers behave when they realize the church at which they worship has been erected on a bright shining lie and reality must inevitably bring it crashing down.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Memorial Day observances are replete with references of the fighting men and women who made “the ultimate sacrifice.”  But Ayn Rand invited us to think of this loss in a deeper, and more ennobling way still when she observed, “If a man dies fighting for his own freedom, it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave…”

Ayn Rand hated war which she viewed as antithetical to rational self-interest and the ultimate denouement of collectivism, which destroys the productive capacities of its subjects, and therefore “cannot exist for long without looting some freer, more productive country.”

But despite her distaste for war, she admired the military men who waged war in defense of human liberty, an admiration underscored by her addresses to military audiences, including her 1972 talk at the U. S. Naval Academy, and her 1974 speech to cadets at West Point Military Academy (which later became the title essay of Philosophy: Who Needs It.

On a personal note, in my family, Memorial Day means more than an excuse to barbecue.  Both of my parents and sister are veterans, my brother is an active duty airman, and my cousin is an Embassy guardsman in Oman. For them, serving in the military is more than a job, but a calling to defend our country and its founding ideal: individual rights.

While I didn’t directly follow in their footsteps by donning the uniform, I feel that I’m doing my patriotic part by waging the philosophical battle for reason, individualism, and capitalism, along with my sisters and brothers-in-arms here at The Atlas Society.  We do this by creatively crafting an arsenal of heat-seeking, light-bearing content that takes direct aim at the deadly ideas that threaten freedom at home—and abroad.

Some of the most effective weapons in that arsenal are our Draw My Life videos, including: 

• My Name is Postmodernism—taking aim at the relativism and nihilism of cultural Marxism
• My Name is Frederick Douglass—celebrating the abolitionist who recruited African American men for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first Black military unit raised by the North during the Civil War
  
• My Name is Socialism—dramatizing socialism as a serial killer rampaging throughout history
• My Name is Kira Argounova—capturing her heroic struggle to love and live under totalitarianism
• My Name is Venezuela—a hostage drama, with Venezuela imprisoned by socialism, yearning for her escape 

In the months ahead, we’ll be releasing several NEW Draw My Life videos, including

• My Name is Francisco d’Anconia
• My Name is Cuba
• My Name is Crypto
• My Name is Critical Race Theory

We can’t all defend America’s founding ideals by serving in the military—or by working full time to advance Objectivist ideas.  But you can fight for your own values by supporting the work of those of us who are fighting, day in and day out, on your behalf.

On this Memorial Day, I encourage you to consider even a small gift to help us arm the next generation with the ideas of Ayn Rand, as an act of rational self-interest, benevolent generosity, and in tribute to those who paid the highest price for our freedom. 

Thank you in advance for supporting The Atlas Society, Friend. Our organization would not be here today if not for your investment!

In liberty, 

Ana