Michael Anton - The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return

Sar animoso in dire manifestamente quello che io intender di quelli e di questi tempi; acciocch gli animi de giovani che questi mia scritti leggeranno, possino fuggire questi, e prepararsi ad imitar quegli, qualunque volta la fortuna ne dessi loro occasione.

I n September 2016, I called that years presidential contest The Flight 93 Election. My thesis was simple: a Clinton victory would usher in an era of semi-permanent Democratic-leftist rule. I here add the qualifier semi- only to make the point that nothing human lasts forever. But I asserted and still believe that one-party rule of the USAblue-state politics from coast to coastcould, once established, last a very long time and might end only with the country itself.

Since then, the question Im most frequently asked is: Will 2020 be another Flight 93 Election? The tone is almost always one of weariness, a sense that the asker just wants politics to recede in importance, wants all this to be over and things to go back to normal.

I wish I had a more encouraging answer. Yet nothing in the intervening timecertainly not the first half of 2020!has shaken my confidence in that earlier judgment. The left has, if anything, become more aggressive, more vindictive, more leftist.

Therefore, not only will 2020 be another Flight 93 Election, so will every election, until and unless one of two things happens. Either the left achieves the final victory it has long sought, and the only national elections that matter are Democratic primaries to determine who goes on to defeatinevitablya hopelessly outnumbered and ineffectual opposition. Or the Republican Partyor some successorleads a realignment along nationalist-populist lines that forces the left to moderate and accept the legitimacy of red-state/flyover/deplorable concerns. Then real politicsvoting, ruling and being ruled in turn, compromise, acceptance of the other sides legitimacycan return, and the normal that so many long for can reemerge.

This book is an effort to encourage the latter outcome. It is part regime analysisan attempt to describe how America is really governed in 2020and part exhortation: to calm down, to moderate, to reassert common bonds of American citizenship, and to restore the primacy of American principles. Call it polemical political science.

If the writing at times seems fraught with urgency, thats because the times are urgent. The country appears to be careening toward something very bad. Its long past time to tap the brakes, take stock, and learn to live with one another. Every day that we dont, the likelihood of a bad outcome increases.

Never has a man been so fortunate in his friends.

The institutional and personal support I receive from Hillsdale College cant be exaggerated. The opportunity to work with so many longtime mentors and friends and to make so many new ones is literally a dream come true. Hillsdale president Larry P. Arnn in a sense discovered me, mentored me, kicked me out of the nest when he judged it was time, continued to guide and nurture my career, and then hired me again for the best job Ive ever had. My gratitude to him and his family knows no bounds.

I also wish to thank my boss and longtime friend Matt Spalding, who is not only building Hillsdales Washington, D.C., presence into a powerhouse, but who read the manuscript carefully and gave many excellent suggestions, all of which I followed. But dont blame him for any remaining misjudgments or mistakes.

My colleagues and friends Tom West and David Azerrad also read the book with care, saved me from many errors of commission and omission, and otherwise just helped make it better. More important than their comments, though, are the years of serious discussion weve shared about the weightiest matters.

Krystina Skurk, a Hillsdale graduate student, provided research assistance and fact-checking that went well above and beyond anything that could reasonably have been expected of anyone. Needless to saybut Ill say it anywayall remaining errors are solely my responsibility.

I must also stateand not merely pro formathat this text in no way represents any official position of the college but is only an expression of my own views.

The great Victor Davis Hansonfellow native Californian and the hardest-working public intellectual in the known worldsomehow managed to find the time to comment extensively on an early draft. The degree to which I acted on his suggestions is tantamount to plagiarism; I hope he does not mind.

Its clear in hindsight that the decisive event of my life (so far) was finding Claremont, half by accident, in 1994. For that I have to thank Deborah Stone Colloton, then a fellow student at St. Johns College in Annapolis, who turned to me one day and declared: You should be a Publius Fellow. Great, I replied, whats that? Turns out its a summer fellowship run by the Claremont Institute. Debbie ensured that I got it. Off I went, expecting to be in Claremont six weeks. I stayed three years. In a way, I never left.

My principal teacher and mentor was Charles Kesler, who has in the decades since become my friend and frequent editor. I may have disappointed Charles in leaving grad school early, but I can never thank him enough for all he taught me, and especially for the enormous amounts of time he spent with my fellow students and me, inside and outside the classroom.

The late Harry Neumann taught me more about modernityespecially Nietzsche, of whom he remains the greatest interpreter I have ever encounteredthan I thought it was possible to know.

Other important teachers I never experienced in the classroom. Its impossible to quantify how much I learned from the great John Marini. Those who know his work will recognize in these pages his analysis of modern rationality and the administrative state. Chris Flannery has consistently encouraged me in every endeavor Ive ever undertaken, no matter how far-fetched, and introduced me to a great deal of literature that he thought I should know and knew I would like. Doug Jeffreytoday another of my bosses at Hillsdalefirst red-penciled my writing in 1994 with a ruthlessness I found upsetting then but have since come to appreciate. He still thinks Im too wordy and go on too long, but imagine how much worse I would be without his influence! Others Ive been fortunate to know and learn from include Angelo Codevilla, John Eastman, Ed Erler, Ken Masugi, the late Peter Schramm, and the late Michael Uhlmann.

The debts I owe to four Claremont Institute presidentsLarry Arnn, the late Tom Silver, Brian Kennedy, and now Ryan Williamsand to the institute itself can never be repaid. All I can say is that they trained me, and many others like me, to make public arguments that move politics. This book is an attempt to give them something of a return on their investment.

As if all that were not enough, I have Claremont to thank for my best friend, David DesRosiers, and my wife.

Throughout the drafting process, I was fortunate to be able to bounce ideas off of many friends, benefit from their insights, and improve from their criticisms. Among those not yet named are Ben Boychuk, Arthur Milikh, Matt Peterson, Nathan Pinkoski, Julie Ponzi, James Poulos, David Reaboi, Michael Ritger and the goose group, and Kyle Shideler.

I gratefully acknowledge the late Larry Peterman, who took a callow undergraduate obsessed with the Great Books and first helped him understand what they really mean. The fruits of our careful readings of Aristotle, Dante, and Machiavelli remain cherished possessions that I will carry for life.