Who's The Enemy?

Big Government Or Woke Corporations?

I suppose ‘Both of the above’ would be another choice, since few things in the big picture of society and politics are simple.

The way this topic came up today began with a clever graphic that Sundance posted:

Note that, as you’d expect at this particular point in time, most of the 15 signs related to the Covid Regime. Obviously, some are of broader application, but it all strikes home more directly within that context. Which is why Sundance asks us to consider “the Government and Medical Establishment Action Toward American Citizens.” He basically has Big Government in mind.

In contrast, Josh Hammer has a provocative essay at the New Criterion that takes an explicitly different approach:

Yesterday’s man, yesterday’s conservatism

On common-good originalism.

The essay’s purpose is to argue that Common Good Originalism is superior to the “fusionism” of Neo-Liberalism or Libertarianism. Common Good Originalism, which he describes by drawing especially (but not exclusively) on the Federalist Papers, is what we need today. Libertarianism is, he says, yesterday’s conservatism. Indeed, he argues, flaws in libertarian thinking have led to where we are. Libertarian cannot get America out of the hole we’ve dug our way into.

However, central to Hammer’s argument is his identification of who our enemy is:

But the Right’s preeminent foe is no longer “Big Government” run amok; now, it is the metastasis of woke ideology, practiced on high by an arrogant ruling-class oligarchy champing at the bit to subjugate the “deplorables.” The spread of woke ideology and the ruling-class oligarchy for which that ideology is a conduit, in turn, is abetted by the rise of a new socio-corporate “private”-sector tyranny adept at wielding and weaponizing the most sophisticated communications networks ever known to man.

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And concentrated woke corporate power is indeed now a greater threat to the American way of life than even concentrated government power, as Ashley Keller persuasively argued at the recent Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention.

It’s an interesting argument. Perhaps another way of looking at it is that the rise of Big Government—which I would identify with the rise of the Administrative State, the rise of administrative agencies that are largely independent both of Congressional and judicial oversight, and even to a great extent of Executive control—is precisely what enabled the the ruling class oligarchy and woke corporate power to gain so much control over the levers of government power. Look at it this way: Does the ruling class oligarchy and woke corporate power exercise more influence through campaign contributions to elected officials or through “regulatory capture” or “agency capture”? Of course it’s a complicated process that involves all branches of government.

Obviously, Sundance had this in mind by referring to the “medical establishment”, which very much includes agencies like the FDA, which derives something like 46% of its budget—in one way or another—from the industries its supposedly ‘regulates.’ Big Pharma is only one of those industries, but certainly a prominent one. On the other hand, Big Pharma—and other branches of the woke corporate sector—don’t neglect the campaign contribution angle.

Hammer’s argument is that the value free or value neutral approach of libertarianism hasn’t a prayer against the value laden woke ruling oligarchy that controls the major corporations. He wants the courts to adopt an equally value laden approach to reign in these threats to our common good. And he wants to use the full power of the government to address these threats, as well:

It is important again to emphasize the connection between common-good originalism and national conservatism, which is more willing to prudentially wield state power to pursue a substantive vision of the good, and which soberly resists the illusion of a “values-neutral” public square or a “values-neutral” constitutional interpretive methodology. It is now obvious that even the Fortune 500 boardroom is the antithesis of “values-neutral,” as the activist Christopher Rufo has done yeoman’s work in helping to unveil.

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Arguments against common-good originalism tend to depict it as imprudent or ahistorical, or otherwise reject it by means of rebutting common-good originalism’s underlying claim that Antonin Scalia–style positivist originalism is morally empty.

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Common-good originalism is a far more natural and suitable jurisprudential complement to the more muscular political economy and common-good capitalism now required by the cratering of the post-war neoliberal order, with all its attendant harms. Those harms include the emboldening of our Chinese archfoe, the offshoring of millions of jobs and shuttering of thousands of factories across the heartland, mass despondency and an unprecedented drug-overdose epidemic, and the engorgement of modern Silicon Valley robber baron monopolists that now wield more control over our day-to-day lives than do all levels of government combined.

Judges interpreting the Constitution, as well as political actors exercising their independent prerogatives to interpret the Constitution, must do so with this backdrop in mind. The telos of the American regime—characterized by substantive justice and the common good—is ill-served, at a time like this, by a political economy of absolutist laissez-faire capitalism for which Scalia-style positivist originalism, with its whiff of Jeffersonian “strict constructionism,” is a natural government-minimizing interpretive corollary. But the common-good capitalism now needed to tame neoliberal excess and reconsolidate a fractured citizenry can only be served by a less rigid jurisprudential “garment” that can empower the state to act decisively, when need be, against neoliberal extravagance and in support of the common good. That “garment” is the nationalist, overtly common-good-oriented jurisprudence of Hamilton, Marshall, and Lincoln: common-good originalism.

Obviously I’m sympathetic to these arguments, but I won’t take sides. There are countervailing arguments as well, so I urge readers to follow the link and see what they think of Hammer’s ideas.

However, perhaps we can conclude with a few links that seem related.

Again, Sundance clearly had the vaccine mandates and the entire Covid Regime in mind. Heather MacDonald had an article in the NYPost this morning that seems to bear on these matters:

Omicron coverage reveals how the establishment, media keep us scared

After all, the MSM is now very much a part of the ruling-class oligarchy, and who benefits—or so the hope would seem to be—from injection mandates if not other major sources of ruling class money: Big Pharma. MacDonald offers six examples of how the MSM conspires with the establishment—political and corporate—to try to keep the populace in a state of panic. The coordinated introductions of vax passes in major Blue cities would be another example, since these mandates are probably the result of establishment pressure. (I’m personally very much in favor of these mandates—in Blue cities.)

Here are MacDonald’s six examples:

1. Create a group norm of fear

The media want you to believe that everyone around you is scared out of his mind, and thus you should be, too. …

2. Buttress group fear with expert opinion

The only public health experts whom the media quote are those determined to put the most dire spin on Omicron. …

3. Manufacture epistemological uncertainty and insist on that uncertainty as long as possible

4. Bury both good news and dissenters from the bad news

5. Omit relevant context

6. Flog the case count

On the other hand, YouGov has just come out with a poll that strongly suggests the populace is developing an immunity to the propaganda that the woke corporate sector—in collusion with the political establishment—is inundating them:

Seven questions, and not a single one did the pro-vax mandate gain a majority.