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2/12/17 interview

https://amgreatness.com/2017/02/12/decius-darkness-qa-michael-anton/

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Michael Anton Influences

Rome (in contrast to Greece, particularly) Athens, Sparta, Peloppenesian War Stoicism Livy’s view of virtuous women/women of vice

Machiavelli (Aquinas on Machiavelli)

Livy even explains that he will record the archaic ritual of devotio at length because “the memory of every human and religious custom has withered from a preference for everything novel and foreign.”[7]

The greatest source of Machiavelli’s reputation is, of course, The Prince (1532). The main theme of this short book is that all means may be resorted to for the establishment and preservation of authority – the end justifies the means – and that the worst and most treacherous acts of the ruler are justified by the wickedness and treachery of the governed. The Prince was condemned by Pope Clement VIII. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a sound biography of Machiavelli. *          *           * http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/machiavelli-still-shocking-after-five-centuries-9126?page=3

[informaction-blog1]

Michael Anton

Writing of

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/marchapril/feature/the-dandy

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/

-http://www.unz.com/article/toward-a-sensible-coherent-trumpism/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/contributor-list/49/

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=1226Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=1881Jaffa4pieces.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/worst-case-scenario/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/paradise-lost-and-regained/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/sour-grapes/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/big-man-on-campus/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/lands-end/

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=6543Chef_Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=2062Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=8772Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/lone-wolfe/

https://www.city-journal.org/contributor

http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/michael-anton

ANTON: That basically throughout human history, the tone of society was set by the top, at every level, and that included clothes. The major changes came from the top, and even when a trend was to dress down, that mostly came from the top. The last big earthquake for us, in men’s clothing was after World War I. The twenties shook everything up. Then things got hammered out in the thirties, and we are still living with those rules.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/darkwingchun.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/man-vs-beast-machiavelli/amp/?client=safari

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”-Mark Twain

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Anton + Trumpism

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/12/dark-essays-by-white-house-staffer-are-the-intellectual-source-code-of-trumpism/
The outing of Anton has inadvertently exposed the intellectual source code of Trumpism
But nobody in the administration has drawn up a real-time ideological blueprint to explain the intentional chaos of what’s happening under Trump — except, as it now turns out, Michael Anton, whose radical theories have been compared to those of a German philosopher named Carl Schmitt, who helped lay the legal foundations of the Nazi Party.
“Trump himself – no man of ideas, to say the least – is unsuited to the task of thinking through what his popularity means or how to build on it. Others will have to do the real work.”-Anton
“creative destruction.“
When you shift through all the hyperbole and insults of “The Flight 93 Election,” you are left with a residue of prejudice. The author refers to “tribal, sub-Third-World foes” and “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty” who are making America “less traditionally American with every cycle.” Immigrants are typically guilty of “rape, shooting, bombing or machete attack.” Their importation is the sign of “a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die.” Trump, in contrast, would say, “I want my people to live.” 
One of the most important tasks of leadership, according to Schmitt, is to identify and fight against a common enemy. 
“The high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete reality, recognized as the enemy.”-Schmitt
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/carl-schmitt%E2%80%99s-war-liberalism-12704?page=show
Decisionism: authority is derived from taking action, strong action, without necessarily having a plan or needing to show positive results or following the law.
Philosophical argument for populism under a charismatic leader who saves the people from danger by acting decisively, outside of the law if necessary.

[informaction-blog1]

Trumpism

"At another level, though, the travel ban might be seen, from the ideological perspective of the people who crafted it, not necessarily as a failure at all. Despite its ostensibly narrow scope, the operation was extraordinarily ambitious, designed to send a message to the world about who Americans are, who can become American, and, most especially, who cannot. The mayhem, inconvenience, and heartbreak it caused were in fact its very intent.”- Chait
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/the-true-purpose-of-trumpism.html
Trumpism combines an instinctive belief in zero-sum relations between countries with a narrow and retrograde definition of American identity. And a key aspect of Trumpism is surprise.
America has long been defined — unlike France or Germany or Japan or Russia — as a country lacking a singular race. The ambition of Trumpism seems to be to create a blood-and-soil American nationalism, an identity from which Asian, Muslim, and Latin American immigrants are excluded permanently.
Jaffa and his students (including Anton) contend that Wilsonian progressivism aimed to bring about a fundamental change of the American “regime” (or form of government) instituted by the founders — and that the expanding administrative state is finally making that change a reality, regulating ever more areas of life, enforcing a uniform secular-egalitarian-globalist view on the country as a whole, actively crushing dissent, usurping popular sovereignty, and placing ever-greater portions of it in the hands of a coterie of elite experts and bureaucrats.
The crux of Anton’s case for supporting Trump was that if he didn’t win, it would mean the effective end of self-government in the United States. For eight years Obama expanded the administrative state more radically than any president since Lyndon Johnson, injecting intrusive regulations much further than ever before into the health-care sector, the energy sector, marriage, religion, even bathroom use in public schools. If Hillary Clinton prevailed, it would mean that those innovations would become the new baseline for even more acts of administrative overreach. After four to eight more years of that, the century-long progressive transformation of the American regime would be complete, rendering constitutional government and the conservative movement lost causes once and for all.
http://theweek.com/articles/678310/why-many-conservative-intellectuals-became-trumpists
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Anton (as Decius) came out in favor of Trump, in part, because he hoped the real-estate mogul would serve as a blunt instrument to bring down key elements of the administrative state, including those outposts of the conservative movement (which he memorably dubbed “Conservative, Inc.”) that live like parasites off of the federal government even while criticizing it and waiting for the next election that gives them an opportunity to trim it at the margins and change nothing fundamental about it at all. But Anton also hoped that Trump’s full-throated defense of the nation, borders, and citizenship would catch fire among the American people, who would at long last rise up to demand that the administrative state be put back in its place — to make room once again for constitutionalism, statesmanship, and republican government of free and equal citizens
Jaffaite decline narrative, according to which America’s founding regime has been supplanted by a form of progressive government that is inimical to the exercise of free citizenship. As long as that assumption prevails, debates among Jaffaite conservatives will continually revert back to the question of whether or not now is the moment of the final collapse of freedom in America.

[informaction-blog1]

Islam + Trumpism

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/the-true-purpose-of-trumpism.html ...pillar of Trumpism is the refusal to distinguish between peaceful and violent Muslims. Trump has said “Islam hates us,” and when asked if he distinguishes between radical Islam and the religion as a whole, he brushed off the distinction: “It’s very hard to separate, because you don’t know who is who.” Bannon has repeatedly emphasized his belief that Islam as a whole poses an existential threat to Christianity. (“Islam is not a religion of peace,” Bannon has said. “Islam is a religion of submission.”) Trump has falsely implicated the entire Muslim-American community in the terrorist attacks of domestic radicals in San Bernardino and Orlando. Trump advisers have depicted the threat of radical Islam as “multidimensional and multigenerational” — that is, pervasive and intrinsic to all Muslims. From 1975 to 2015, immigrants from the seven excluded countries killed a total of zero Americans in terror attacks on U.S. soil. And yet Trumpists see terrorismas a pervasive, invisible threat that spreads within Muslim communities. Punishing innocent Muslims for the threat posed by terrorists is not a side effect of their policy but an expression of its tenets.

[informaction-blog1]

Trumpism

"At another level, though, the travel ban might be seen, from the ideological perspective of the people who crafted it, not necessarily as a failure at all. Despite its ostensibly narrow scope, the operation was extraordinarily ambitious, designed to send a message to the world about who Americans are, who can become American, and, most especially, who cannot. The mayhem, inconvenience, and heartbreak it caused were in fact its very intent."- Chait http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/the-true-purpose-of-trumpism.html Trumpism combines an instinctive belief in zero-sum relations between countries with a narrow and retrograde definition of American identity. And a key aspect of Trumpism is surprise.

[informaction-blog1]

Michael Anton Influences

Rome (in contrast to Greece, particularly) Athens, Sparta, Peloppenesian War Stoicism Livy's view of virtuous women/women of vice Machiavelli (Aquinas on Machiavelli) Livy even explains that he will record the archaic ritual of devotio at length because "the memory of every human and religious custom has withered from a preference for everything novel and foreign."[7] The greatest source of Machiavelli's reputation is, of course, The Prince (1532). The main theme of this short book is that all means may be resorted to for the establishment and preservation of authority -- the end justifies the means -- and that the worst and most treacherous acts of the ruler are justified by the wickedness and treachery of the governed. The Prince was condemned by Pope Clement VIII. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a sound biography of Machiavelli. *          *           * http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/machiavelli-still-shocking-after-five-centuries-9126?page=3

[informaction-blog1]

Michael Anton

Writing of

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/marchapril/feature/the-dandy

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/

-http://www.unz.com/article/toward-a-sensible-coherent-trumpism/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/contributor-list/49/

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=1226Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=1881Jaffa4pieces.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/worst-case-scenario/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/paradise-lost-and-regained/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/sour-grapes/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/big-man-on-campus/

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/lands-end/

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=6543Chef_Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=2062Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=8772Anton.pdf

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/lone-wolfe/

https://www.city-journal.org/contributor

http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/michael-anton

ANTON: That basically throughout human history, the tone of society was set by the top, at every level, and that included clothes. The major changes came from the top, and even when a trend was to dress down, that mostly came from the top. The last big earthquake for us, in men’s clothing was after World War I. The twenties shook everything up. Then things got hammered out in the thirties, and we are still living with those rules.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/darkwingchun.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/man-vs-beast-machiavelli/amp/?client=safari

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”-Mark Twain