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Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearings were an embarrassing and degrading spectacle for America. They were ugly, they were painful and they were shameful. They weren’t simply the result of the year-old #MeToo movement, nor just another symptom of the decline in political norms in the wake of President Trump’s victory. These heated and intense hearings were the reflection of the ongoing war over America’s soul.
This war truly divides American politics today: the struggle is between those who revere America’s past and those who question or disdain it. It is a war that, like binary conflicts of the past, promises to get much worse before resolution can be found.
America’s Founding Fathers recognised how dangerous such divisive binary wars over values could be to the political order. In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison explained how the new Constitution was intended to minimise the dangers. Their arguments remain important today, both in understanding why America has so rarely become engulfed in these types of conflicts, and why it is now teetering on the brink of one.
They identified two types of conflicts that could destroy a state. The first flowed from the economic demands democracy would create. Looking to the ancient Greek and Roman republics, they sought to remove the possibility that a popular majority would try to take the wealth of a rich minority. To this end, the Constitution’s primary author, Madison, insisted on three innovations that remain mainstays of America’s governing structure: representation, bicameralism, and the separation of powers.
The existence of the three reduces the possibility that one single group – what Madison called a faction – could seize control of all the levers of government at once. Representation ensured that a mob could not be whipped into a frenzy to violent action: their will could be exercised only indirectly. Bicameralism meant that a faction had to obtain control of two different electoral bodies, each with its own mode of election, and elected according to different schedules, to obtain legislative power. The separation of powers added a third hurdle: that such a faction would need to win control of an independently elected executive to wield the full power of government. Madison thought that these measures would break the zeal and intensity of a single faction’s desire to dominate, and as such preserve civic peace.
The second type of binary conflict stems from debates over ways of life. If one faction believed that their way was the right way, it could use control of the government to force its views on dissenters. This is what happened in Europe during the religious wars of the 16thand 17th Centuries, when Protestants and Catholics warred incessantly over whose was the one true religion.
Madison and the Founders sought to prevent such a destructive conflict from ever coming to America by removing religion from national politics altogether. The Constitution contains a clause that forbids the institution of a religious test for holding public office; in the United States, simply being a Catholic or a Jew would not bar one from public life.
The Constitution’s First Amendment also prevents Congress from “making any law respecting the establishment of a religion, or the free exercise thereof”, further removing religious disputes from national public life. Nothing in the original Constitution prevented states from establishing a religion; indeed, Massachusetts would not disestablish its state church until 1833, and New Hampshire did not remove its own religious test for office until 1876. The Constitutional impediments, however, did prevent religious quarrels from becoming national political questions.
Today’s conflict is neither religious nor economic. In this respect, the Founders’ protections have held. But the growth in national judicial power has made Madison’s original barriers to faction much less salient. And today, binary conflicts over values need not necessarily concern religious doctrines.
Americans today are, instead, deeply divided over culture; they are at odds over which is the best way of life to lead. On the one side are people who find America’s traditional, European, and Christian culture defective; on the other, there are those who believe that heritage to be valuable and essential. The first group finds its political expression in support for same-sex marriage, feminism, and measures empowering immigrants and non-whites. The second is the realm of the evangelical Christian and its allies in other orthodox and traditional faiths – as well as those worried about the declining importance of Americans of European heritage.
A poll from late 2017 shows how neatly these views separate into the two political camps. Conducted by YouGov on behalf of the cross-partisan Voter Study Group, it asked whether respondents thought America “has one primary culture with traditions and values that most everyone believes in”, or “has many different cultures with different traditions and values that people believe in”. Seventy-seven percent of Clinton voters said America has many different cultures, while 54% of Trump voters said it had one primary culture. The share of respondents who thought America has one primary culture increased with self-described conservatism, and among groups most favourable to Trump or the religious Right.
These differences have spawned dramatic increases in partisan hatred. A new book, Prius or Pickup, citing survey data, shows that nearly half of Republicans and Democrats hate the other party, more than twice the level of hatred just two decades ago. Another survey taken in 2016 found that between 41 and 45 % of partisans thought the other party’s policies were a threat to the nation. By mid-2017 more than half of Democrats and Republicans thought the other party represented a national threat. In light of these data, perhaps recent editorials by liberal columnists saying the Kavanaugh confirmation was “illegitimate” or represented “war” should be taken as serious beliefs rather than hyperbole.
These cultural divides are politically crucial nowadays because America’s Constitution has, through decades of Supreme Court rulings, made them the subject of national political debate. The traditional understanding that the federal Constitution, and especially the First Amendment, did not apply to the states was overruled in a series of cases between 1925 and 1947. Since then, virtually every major issue concerning traditional Christian views of morality has been decided via a Supreme Court decision, not by legislation. As a result, cultural questions have been nationalised in a way the Founders sought to prevent, and control of the Court is thus vital to each side’s interests.
This is why Kavanaugh’s nomination has stirred such passions. His confirmation meant that his would be the fifth and deciding vote that could overrule a host of Court precedents supported by Democrats and Clinton voters. For them, therefore, stopping him was a must, something that could not be compromised. The survival of their way of life depended on their winning this battle.
Similarly, traditionalists saw his vote as a bulwark against further potential Court rulings that might be adverse to their interests, as well as a potential vote to overturn such rulings as Roe v Wade (which established a constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion) or Obergefell v Hodges (which established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right across the United States). Losing for them was not an option.
The religious wars were similarly fought over the right way to live, each side deeming its own interpretation of Christianity as the one true one. Only the stalemate produced by over a century of warfare, culminating in the Treaty of Westphalia, ended the bloodshed.
The Westphalian solution could be an answer to America’s woes, but adopting it would require turning back American jurisprudence to its earlier conceptions. The Treaty famously established the idea of religious federalism – as contained in the doctrine cuius regio, eius religio (the ruler of a realm determines its religion) – as the solution to the wars. This is identical in nature to the original American formulation that matters of culture should be for the individual states, and not the national government, to decide.
If applied today, it would mean that Baptist Alabama could have one set of laws concerning abortion and homosexuality, while progressive California could have another. Each side could believe zealously in its own views but, by removing the conflict from the national sphere, the nation itself could be preserved.
There would be difficulties, as the experience of post-Westphalian Europe demonstrates. Religious minorities within states were still subject to persecution. Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 ended the freedom of Protestants to worship, leading to mass emigration. Even Great Britain suppressed the rights of religious dissidents until a series of acts of “emancipation” restored full civil rights to Catholics (1829) and Jews (1858).
In contemporary United States, however, many Americans would be concerned about what would happen in traditionalist states to non-whites, gays and lesbians, and women who sought abortions in other states. The federalist solution sits very uneasily with the ideal of universal human rights.
America did try this approach before, and it ended in our Civil War. And the division was over human slavery. The Founders had deferred the conflict when they drafted the Constitution by adopting a Westphalian model and leaving slavery to the states to determine. But by the mid-19thCentury that solution no longer satisfied either side.
Those who opposed slavery in the free states of the North sought to either abolish it or curtail its spread by barring slaves from federal territories. Those who supported slavery in the slave-holding South sought to defend it as a positive good and insisted on the right to settle federal territories with slaves in tow. No attempt to mediate this dispute, although many were attempted, could satisfy both sides. And so, as President Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, “the war came”.
No one expects this conflict to end in war, but that is because the ability of one section of the country to resist another is no longer militarily possible. The potential for physical conflict cannot be ignored, however, as Left-wing activists follow conservative legislators to dinner to harass them, and Right-wing activists regularly denounce their foes as mendacious and deceitful.
Hundreds of protestors have been arrested already within Senate office buildings as anti-Kavanaugh forces swarm offices of the last undecided members. In a country with nearly 400 million firearms in private hands, it would be easy to imagine random acts of violence breaking out anywhere in the country no matter what the Kavanaugh result had been. What happens now only God knows.
The third author of the Federalist Papers, John Jay, noted that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs”. That original unity no longer pertains, and that is the root the cause of the conflict.
It is difficult now to see how it ends. Similar conflicts in history have been defused through partition (India and Pakistan, for example), a grant of special rights to the minority, as in the Edict of Nantes or the Good Friday Agreement, or through the replacement of one set of primary values (Christianity) with another (liberalism). Each of these examples, though, contain the potential seeds of its own failure.
America faced questions like these during the period of our massive immigration, which was diluting the political power of our original British, Protestant settlers with millions of Catholics and Jews from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe. After much trial and error, forged in part through the common experiences of the Great Depression and the Second World War, American identity morphed from that of a British-descended, Protestant country to one of the ‘melting pot’ where people from any background could come, so long as they adopted American values of decency, hard work, and devotion to political liberty.
It is possible that this identity can be updated to both include the new, secular or non-Christian American while maintaining the liberties and values of the older stock. But given the depth of the division and ferocity of the passions on display, it’s hard to see any sort of resolution coming soon.
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SubscribeYou know, I don’t know how many sob stories on reality TV or TikTiok I’ve heard about “I was picked on relentlessly so I showed the bullies and became a great person”. It’s like a continual testimony that bullying works. It’s so natural amongst kids, that literally ALL of us can remember a time we were ‘bullied’. Yet here we are telling kids to accept everyone and bullying is bad and what do we get? This woke ass nonsense that’s destroying society.
Having known nothing about the show, I recently came across the book What Not To Wear. In it the two of them contrast good and bad styles for various given problem areas.
It was certainly interesting, but very much highlighted to me that their recommendations are really quite subjective. Yes, a preference for symmetry and “healthy” looks is probably universal, but even what the latter means has varied quite a bit over time. When it comes to clothes, then, there are plenty of clashing opinions.
I think that’s where the classist and snobbishness accusations come from: a sense that these particular opinions were being elevated above all else.
Trinity and Suzannah are a pair of nasty privileged women. I am unsurprised that you like them.
Living in another country I’ve never had a chance to watch that show but it sounds like something I would have enjoyed. I find the show Absolutely Fabulous Hilarious.
AbFab is totally different, and yes it was extremely funny.
A couple of decades ago, Joan Rivers, a brilliant and brutal comedian who got her start back in the Sixties, had a show where she critiqued the gowns that actresses were wearing on the red carpet for the Oscars. I like watching the mostly beautiful gowns, and then I discovered Joan’s show. Her takedowns of the actress’s gowns, were hilarious. Gowns I would have thought were pretty, suddenly were outrageously ugly. She never attacked the women’s looks, after all they were all gorgeous. But the dresses were fair game. I guess for Joan, and me, it was a way to make us feel better about ourselves. But it was not very nice.
I was with it until “Women are all in this together.”
Maybe I’d read better if I scrolled faster.
“massive knockers”.
I have enjoyed Ms Stock’s writing in this organ for sometime. A very thoughtful and intelligent person who writes clearly for the likes of me.
However, seeing use the phrase “massive knockers” makes me forever her slave.
They were wonderful, educational and empowering for women, encouraging everyone to work with their positive features rather than emphasizing the negative. I miss them.
If only we’d known at the time! I remember the uproar every time a female politician (or other prominent figure) was criticised for her fashion choices. This was sexist, and would never be done to man. If only we’d realised at the time that it was actually empowering.
I can’t say I ever watched it. Probably caught a glimpse and decided it wasn’t for me. Of all the things to get nostalgic about, female meanness seems an odd choice.
Besides, there’s still plenty of it on the internet, and men are still a socially acceptable target. Take, for example, the various bizarre “relationship tests” doing the rounds.
And there’s plenty of anti female female stuff if that’s what you’re looking for, though it tends to focus on genuinely poor female behaviour rather than bad clothing choices.
I thought our overlords were the patriarchy. Have I missed some sort of revolution? Why are people still blaming the patriarchy for stuff? Confused!
Great entertaining article KS ( Nice to have a break from overly worthy up-tight stuffy pants articles !!!) I always thought of T&S as the Fashionista Storm-troopers but they were hilarious & never did take themselves TOO seriously….blimey it wasn’t all that long ago but WTF has happened to our ability to differentiate between humour & po-faced outrage at any alternative view to the approved doctrine….The hideous nonsense of ‘Be Kind’ parroted by the real social fascists of today would be funny if it wasn’t utterly depressing & grim
What has happened? Tony Blair made our kids all go to university to be brain washed by humourless, nihilist Marxists. The result has been to almost completely expunge British eccentricity and individuality and replace it with a group think adherence that would have impressed a pre enlightenment Pope.
In Cambridge Arts Theatre’s “Cinderella” this year there aren’t any Ugly Sisters – they’re “Wicked Sisters”, but at least they’re still blokes in frocks
But “wicked” in youth speak means “great” or presumably when it comes to looks very attractive
No no no. That’s wikkid!
You ain’t down wid da kidz like wot I iz, old thing
You are just down with the dyslexic ones
Brilliantly observed and laugh out loud funny, kathleen Stock is fast becoming a national treasure.
If I may add one absurdity to the pile, I recently heard a young (overweight, very average) young woman on an American panel discussion say that she had spent a great deal of money on therapy to convince herself that she is a 10 out 10 when it comes to beauty.
This “women are all tens stuff” is very striking, though I don’t know how widespread it really is. The idea seems to be that you should be confident and full of self belief – rather than that women actually are. Though it does seem to be the case that women overestimate themselves relative to men.
Uh, men overestimate themselves, too. It’s called trying to get a date with a good looking person.
‘The sociologist Angela McRobbie has even written about its “post-feminist symbolic violence” towards working-class women, in the form of “public humiliation of people for their failure to adhere to middle-class standards in speech or appearance”.’
What on earth is post feminist symbolic violence. Well we loved it, watched it every week, I didn’t realise they were slammed by socioligists with no sense of humour.
‘ The transgressively unrestrained jibes were equally distributed, it seemed to me.’
I agree, the ladies in our house didn’t feel like persecuted working class women anyway, do you think the sociologist lady actually asked any working class ladies what they thought before she got her pen out to protect us from’ post feminist symbolic violence,’.
‘ spitting out their damning verdicts in cut-glass tones with an air of pernickety feudal lords,’
This is so funny. That’s what we used to do when we watched it too. Probably without the cut glass tones though and more swearing. It’s very cathartic.
‘I think that most of us looked on with sympathetic fellow feeling, and came away with some relief and even hope. Instead of private, shame-filled self-chastisement about a particular problem area, perhaps we could just accept that everybody has one or two of the blasted things, then go shopping to celebrate.’
Absolutely. They did do a good job too, the transformations using just clothes, hair and makeup were pretty fabulous, I’m pretty sure most of the ladies that took part were really pleased too.
‘ Back then, we even called them Trinny and Tranny and nobody lost their jobs’
Can we have those days back please.
“Women are all in this together, was the underlying subtext”. Except that’s not really true is it. Nature is very unfair in its distribution of physical comeliness. This is something that will always cause disappointment and resentment in the less lucky ones. And it is something that tends to get shied away from in journalism…. the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired. The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of prettiest women and the less attractive ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ rarely gets acknowledged.
So there’s ‘What Not to Say’ and then there’s ‘What Not to Notice’.
I, too, watched WNTW with my bootcuts “flapping round my ankles” and think you’ve got this spot-on, and given me a laugh in the process! Far better to swap the polo neck for the scoop, than to be marched off for nips and tucks à la “Ten Years Younger”…
I never watched Trinny and Susannah, but I do also miss the almost casual cruelty of TV in the noughties. Not the cruelty itself, but the freedom of expression that made it possible. We have indeed lost that.
I loved them. They were super funny and yes, they managed to get all shapes and sizes looking good in the right clothes.
Typo:
“Yet strangely, this doesn’t seem to have made women any less content.”
“…any more content”.
Thanks for rectifying.
Stock is really getting into the whole reactionary gammon thing isn’t she. All for a few clicks from the swivel eyed loons. Slightly sad isn’t it?
Not so sure about that, but I do feel that she is perhaps re evaluating feminist ideas from the past which she perhaps once agreed with. I thought this was evident in her book as well.
I wasn’t that keen on this piece. TV programmes based on low level meanness just aren’t my cup of tea. The only good thing about it is that it is a timely illustration of what is wrong with the Manichaen men bad, women good view of things.
To me the article, which I enjoyed, basically highlighted the freedom of speech which we have lost to the snow flake, “I’ve been insulted generation”. It was a show of its time, and obviously appealed to many people, me being one of them. One could at least learn something from it, and the participants took part willingly.
The loss of this show might partly explain why our TV news presenters are so badly dressed. I swear I’ve seen Ugg boots on one presenter. And no, they weren’t on location they were in the studio!
And yes it does matter. You’re on TV for crying out loud. Make an effort. It’s pathetic.
What nonsense you old codgers talk!
OMG – not Ugg boots! It’ll be jeggings next!
Note to Poppy Sowerby: This is how to write intelligently about popular culture.
You’re channelling your inner Trinny there, Geoff.
I prefer to think of it as my Knowall Goodall, Lancs.
Sad, old man. You probably believe that young people should be seen but not heard. Poppy is a different generation from Kathleen and writes about a different generation with an understanding that many of the people she writes for are detached from her subject matter.
Not really. Poppy might one day match Kathleen Stock’s wit and insight, but she’s not there yet. This is not a criticism, just an observation that she’s younger and less experienced.
The difference between the neo-Victorians and the originals is that the neo-Victorians manage to be both priggish and crass. The Victorians may have been a bunch of self-righteous stuffed shirts, but at least they had manners. Today’s Grundys will attempt to shut down behavior they find objectionable in the most offensive, confrontational way possible, and believe that doing so is a sign of moral character. And for extra churlishness, their prudery is based not on a genuine concern for improving public morals but out of ideological one-upmanship and totalitarian political peevishness, making them more kin to the Maoist Red Guards than to Bowdler or Comstock.
The neos never had the advantages of the Church of England.
We used to be able to laugh at ourselves in a time not that long ago. People took themselves less seriously and felt no need to pose in faux outrage on behalf of some group that never asked to be pitied.
There is an unmentioned difference, too, between these women and the Cowell/Ramsey programs. The two guys are bashing people to their faces in an environment where the point is to be a humorless a$$ho!e, not to make crack one-liners.
“We used to be able to laugh at ourselves”
I still laugh at you all the time…
“I still laugh at you all the time…”
But not at yourself, which both makes his point and explains your own inability to ever say anything insightful or perceptive.
Took the words right out of my mouth!
Well there is a lot about you to laugh at
That’s two upvotes from me already. The rest has done you good. You’re on form.
What a hoot! I used to watch the US version for years, and it was VERY different. A lot tamer. Probably a lot less fun.
LOL I used to think (US show) Stacey was too brutal at times — but I realize now that I felt this way because she wasn’t funny! And she didn’t turn the spotlight on herself like these two did.
Excellent point that “the televisual theatre of cruelty didn’t disappear, it just changed tack.” I watched Ramsay for a while, but eventually felt disgusted and stopped. Such a small man.