On Ukraine (Again)

Muh Ukraine is a Rallying Cry that won’t Hunt--A Response to Larry Arnhart

Apr 09, 2022

Post note: This piece took way longer than expected to write. My posts on serious topics, including Grant will proceed at a more frequent clip in the coming weeks. For that, apologies. Those who are paying should receive more content that interests them, and that will be remedied as I proceed into 1870 on Grant and some other reviews I have planned sitting in the hopper.

We interrupt this week’s poast on all things Grant a great consternation among the normie/globalist crowd. Many are quite verklempt that we won’t fall into line over muh Ukraine and get on board. It’s the current thing! Those who support Ukraine, even from Trump supporters, have fallen for the boomer mindset. The party bonus is that in supporting Ukraine, they now support the Azov squad. How quaint. Take a gander at this guy who, in his thesis that Ukraine is a liberal democratic state, ends up proving Nazis are actually quite accepted. Ooops!

This includes Larry Arnhardt who (although no Trump fan), waded into the Ukraine thicket. I must reveal, he was an important supporter of mine in the entire Patrick Henry College meltdown—caused solely by its president, a form of Woke “christian,” Mike Farris. He made many reasonable comments about it while it was underway. Not to cloud this post with that thorny and irrelevant topic, Arnhardt was a staunch defender when he did not have to be. Nothing I write here diminishes my respect, though, it may strain the friendship because I object strongly to what I consider profound errors. Once again, my Cicero post on friendship proves fortuitous.

Before continuing, I want to add this important point: my opinions here are my own. I do not purport to speak for anyone, much less Claremont. The Institute can defend itself from criticism much better than I can. So, nothing I write here should be transposed onto others who are quite able to speak for themselves.

Many who jumped on the Trump train took some time to jump off it. Ukraine was their exit destination. Now they are all Russia man bad never questioning whether Russia remains a communist country. What communist takes communion?! But the question of Russia’s distance from communism does not mean we should support Russia; neither does it mean we should support Ukraine. The globalists have caused this war, perhaps on purpose through their meddling into Ukraine’s affairs. The East is doing all it can to stem the tide of the anti-human digital swarm where, as Schwab revealed, we will own nothing and love it. From Russia’s (and the East!) perspective, the Davos crowd and their deep state enforcement troops fired the first shot by undermining their country insisting on the proliferation of woke government the world over. John Mark Dougan has a bit to say about this western advance in this regard—a clear intent of Russian provocation.

For those who are on the side of muh Ukraine, there is no acknowledgment of the current situation and the administrative state’s involvement in it:

The present occupant of the White House along with many other globalists in the minority ruling class, are deep into Ukraine money laundering.
The Biden laptop accounts not just child trafficking, but rampant corruption of the country through business associations personally grifted by the ruling class in America
The DoD funded bio labs in Ukraine (Hunter laptop confirmed that this week, as if we needed it for confirmation)
No Name, his Mistress, and Klobuchar visited Ukraine promising war, and when they got back, No Name dropped the Russia Hoax to the media.
The U.S. govt, through Obama, started a color revolution, and overthrew the Russia friendly, democratically elected, president.
The open invitation of Ukraine in NATO as a threat to Russia (yes, they said this) after the color revolution.
NATO is intent on exporting western “values” to the religious east. Go trans or go home.

For those who did not pay attention since 2014—our elected officials, interfered into a region for their own profit, and overthrew a democratically elected president because he was intent on prosecuting their corruption.

All of these consdiderations, and many others, are practical and circumstantial elements that anyone interested in Natural Right would take into account. The west is far more depraved and corrupt than in Jaffa’s day. Digital has sped up the decadence.

Permit me to point out the obvious: Arnhart cannot believe that Jaffa would believe X is more descriptive of what Arnhart thinks Jaffa might have thought than to what Jaffa thought. In the defense of Ukraine, Arnhart would have us believe Jaffa would have supported all of these things and consider them worthy of defense:

The Maidain coup over throwing a legitimate government
The overt and open support of Nazi enforcers like Azov in Ukraine, complete with congressional exemption for funding Nazi’s in the region. Then, the persecution of the Donbass.
Zelensky’s recent directive to outlaw all political parties, except him of course (March 20)
The west’s cultural invasion into other countries imposing a woke pagan ideology—up to and including the erasing of biological sex
The government’s finance and support of bioweapons labs in Ukraine on Russia’s border (add here, Wuhan and Taiwan). Why Ukraine?
That Russia is planning invasion of the U.S. (Arnhart alludes to this, and yet, provides no proof)
America should be GAE
The Declaration commands we build a global empire
America should destroy monsters abroad regardless of prudence or cost—including Afghanistan?
To top it all off we are expected to trust a government that for two years, locked us down over a fake pandemic, threatened our jobs, our lives, and our children. They then, through their corporate partners, forced us to engage in activity clearly unhealthy. A government that still dictatorially tries to silence unapproved dissent—a government that jails the political opposition. The same people who clamor for invasion of Russia, are the same whose brownshirts torched our cities, tore down our monuments, harassed, kicked, beat, and murdered people who did not agree with them. They then stole an election.

Russia is not the dictator we have in our backyard.

Essentially, Arnhart wants us to believe these facts would not matter to Jaffa were he alive today. He wants us to ignore the fact that this regime has turned oligarchic. Indeed, he expects us to believe he knows more about Jaffa’s mind on present topics in spite of his death! The west has now arrived at the point Jaffa (and Strauss) divined we were headed. At its most fundamental level, the west represents nothing and is open about the self-loathing it has for our homeland. This is what Arnhardt asserts Jaffa would defend. I do not think he would.

I am not going to quote from Arnhardt’s piece, but will summarize in the interest of space. Essentially, Arnhart’s proclaimed the students of Jaffa, and the Claremont Institute specifically, have “betrayed” Jaffa. You can read that here. He then went on in another post to call Claremont, “nihilist.” Absurd. The substance of the argument runs something like this: Codevilla says in an essay that we should not get involved in Ukraine because of the Monroe Doctrine; Jaffa rejected the Monroe Doctrine. Ergo, Claremont has gone against Jaffa! He never provides any evidence.

Arnhart then states something like this: the Claremont Institute not supporting the war in Ukraine is like the Socialist party in America who also do not support Ukraine. Therefore, Claremont must be socialist! LULZ. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc much? Then he asserts that the Declaration demands we stand against tyranny worldwide by force. This argument is GAE. He is most certainly conflating the Declaration’s principles as a call to world wide revolution—sounds…Leninist doesn’t it? Jaffa made it clear that he feared the leftist propaganda would seep into the American mind, especially those trapped in higher ed institutions.

Would Jaffa really have supported imperial adventure? We have some evidence for an answer on this point.

In “The Politics of Freedom,” Jaffa writes, that the west may arrive at such a state where we will,

call things by names that are the opposite of what they really are. Slavery will be called freedom, freedom slavery, peace war, and war peace. In the name of equality of opportunity, there will be a privileged bureaucratic elite choosing its successors according to its whim. Perhaps, however, no one will notice what has happened: they will see this regime as simply the fulfillment and perfection of the promises of the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble of the Constitution.1

Peaceful protest will be called insurrection (J6); Riots will be called peaceful protest (2020).

Arnhart makes the mistake Jaffa feared. He equates the Declaration for purposes it was not intended, and redefines it in ways that comport with his political passion. The ironic thing is that he does this by supporting the ruling class. In fact, Jaffa asserts in strong terms that those who fall for a utopian foreign policy of state building for others would do so, “in the name of freedom and equality, which is all the more powerful for being irrational.”

The conflation Arnhart makes here is surprising. Just because Ukrainians have a natural right to take charge of their government, does not mean America should ride to the rescue and essentially make it happen for them. The Declaration says it is a “people” who must do this, not a foreign power. It is their natural right, not ours. But Arnhart never quotes from the Declaration; he quite loosely asserts the Declaration says what he says it says. In all of this, Arnhart provides not one shred of evidence Jaffa rejected the Monroe Doctrine in the name of the Declaration.

Jaffa implored that we should be less an empire and more concerned with our own country. He did not support foreign adventure because the character of the people was different from ours. We cannot change a particular people in particular places—something Jaffa noted in Commentary Magazine:

When a people forming a government do not concede to each other the mutual and reciprocal enjoyment of such rights, no government by majority rule is possible. Republican government was not possible anywhere in Europe before the American founding. The European wars of the 16th and 17th centuries were wars of religion, with Protestants and Catholics attempting so far as possible to exterminate each other. Until sectarian differences are removed from the political process, government by majority rule in any form is impossible.

In the American Founding as the Best Regime, Jaffa wrote:

The American Revolution and the American Constitution became possible only because the rights of man as man—the rights of an enlightened humanity under the moral order of the laws of nature and of nature’s God—defined the ground of civic friendship, subordinating the ancient distinctions, not only of religion but of ethnicity and race.2

Is Ukraine fighting Russia to achieve anything like this? They are not; and that Arnhart does not defend them doing so is revealing. Zelensky has never said that he is defending his country because Russia has somehow denied their natural rights. As Jaffa noted above, for a just government to be formed it needs an enlightened people to recognize their rights by Nature. If there is no enlightenment, there is ignorance. We should be suspicious of anyone who claims that the Ukranians (much less the Russians!) are enlightened. Arnhart seems to think that anyone anywhere (against Russia), can rise up violently for any reason and we automatically have to show up to support them because they are doing so for natural rights, or something. Arnhart thus makes a utopian assumption: that the Ukranians are asserting natural rights as the Declaration asserts natural rights. It is just as possible that this is a tribal war—the Donbass, and Crimean people do not want to be a part of Ukraine, something Arnhart does not even address. Does not Crimea have a natural right to life, that, Ukraine tried to kill off in their denial of fresh water? Ukraine has had ample opportunity through Zelensky to persuade his countrymen that theirs could be a state where natural rights are secured. He hasn’t done any of that. The notion that a deliberative state exists in either country ought to cause us pause. The Declaration states that in order for a people to be justly governed, their consent must be enlightened. Do we see that in Ukraine? Arnhart glosses over all this and expects us to accept without evidence the rather large blue pill that Ukranians are like us in 1776.

We could make another point viz. Arnhart: he does not consider that we might sympathize with a people against their government, but that it does not mean we then go to war in their defense—see Cuba rebellion of 1869. In the Russia invasion of Ukraine, as with the Spanish of Cuba, there is no threat to the United States that we would be next in their imperial designs. Further, to quote Harold Rood (likely also another Claremont apostate in Arnhart’s eyes), we should have some consideration of winning. If we enter a war, how exactly do we win? Here’s a more pointed question: when was the last time America won a war or sunk a ship? If Russia AND Ukraine are despotic, what is our plan to win? What is the plan to hold the territory won? The lack of any concern for winning, how, and what we would do after, would be another prudent reason to avoid the mess costing American lives for…what exactly again? Arnhart appears to want us to repeat Afghanistan, Gulf war 1, Vietnam….ad infinitum.

Furthermore, it might be a bit obvious, but NATO is not the Declaration, and, fun fact, Ukraine is not a part of NATO. In fact, Putin publicly stated that Ukraine in NATO was a red line; this was honest diplomacy, and yet, the west thought they were a paper tiger. Arnhart’s reaction to all this is basically, “so?” Even the Cold War warriors did not scurry headlong into such diplomatic madness—see Harold Rood (again) where strategy and logistics must go together in order to take and keep territory.

In the only reference to the Monroe Doctrine I can find in Jaffa’s writings, he spoke of it positively. It is worth quoting in full:

Yet America’s fate was linked to Britain’s. Geography has made us in all essentials as much an island nation as Britain. With our enormous coastlines, on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, we are vulnerable to any hostile nation, either in Europe or in Asia, that controls the sea lanes to those coastlines. American isolationists have been subject to the delusion that the Atlantic and the Pacific are barriers to aggression from overseas. In fact, the oceans are not barriers, but pathways. The delusion has been fostered by the fact that the British navy, for over a century, has barred hostile powers the way to our shores. The Monroe Doctrine was predicated upon the barrier of the British navy. It is worth remembering, by the way, that the United States triumphed in the American Revolution, but only when the French navy intervened to keep the British fleet separated from the British army.3

Notice that Jaffa criticizes the modern isolationists, who foolishly forgot about the Monroe Doctrine believing that ocean was enough for protection. In fact, Jaffa concludes that the Monroe Doctrine is sound policy because it recognized the pathway oceans provided; it was necessary because it realized America may be threatened by foreign powers, as it was with Britain during the American Revolution.

We hasten to point out as well, that in this very same article Jaffa defended Churchill for defending Russia during the war! Why? Because the greater threat was the Wehrmacht. The same political prudence that led to the alliance with Russia in WW2 was the same as the one that developed a policy of containment in 1946. This was concluded peacefully by Thatcher and Reagan through “the disappearance of the Lenninsit-Stalanist regime from the stage of world history.”

Jaffa’s political counsel was that Hitler made a colossal “blunder” by invading Russia because the Russia “was no threat to him.” Is Russia a threat to us now? If so how? The absence of some affirmative argument for invasion on behalf of Ukraine should send off alarm bells.

A final note on this topic: Jaffa criticizes the “America First” argument for its imprudence. He calls it “misnamed” because it cut off potential political action in defense of the country, our country. A true America First policy acts when circumstances required. Jaffa’s essay was prompted by something Henry Regnery wrote criticizing America, and Churchill, for entering the war! Regnery reflected peak isolationist thought. As alluded above regarding the ocean barrier, Jaffa was not criticizing America First, but only the iteration of isolationism that was then popular in the lead up to the war. When a country such as Germany made it clear their intent to “rule the world,” military action by America was necessary. The isolationists of the 1930s-40s cut off prudence to act when the circumstances call for it—that in a nutshell is natural right.

It is no small thing that we should praise those who do great service for their country, as Jaffa remembers Churchill did for England. He did not run around the world and save others from whatever menace imposed itself on them. In this regard, Jaffa praises Churchill who regrettably did not save Poland, but managed to save England.

In a speech in 1991, Jaffa said,

The defeat of communism in the USSR and its satellite empires by no means assures its defeat in the world. Indeed, the release of the West from its conflict with the East emancipates utopian communism at home from the suspicion of its affinity with an external enemy. The struggle for the preservation of western civilization has entered a new—and perhaps far more deadly and dangerous—phase.

In all his concern for the European wars and conflicts, Jaffa never, not once, said, we needed to invade in the name of the Declaration. Jaffa was certainly concerned about communism, whether it was here at home, or in Russia, but his interest came from the ambitions of the Soviet Union, which sought to spread its influence over the world. Arnhart seems to think we are giving Russia something like Neville Chamberlain gave Hitler when he tried to appease him. But, what are earth is our non-involvement in Ukraine giving them anything? As Jaffa wrote, giving someone something is different from giving them nothing. The prior makes one more morally culpable in ways the latter does not.

Jaffa was never a promoter of American imperialism. In Statesmanship, Jaffa explicitly supported war against the Axis because of western survival. Because Jaffa believed that the salvation of the west was imperative, he supported the actions against worldwide communism. He did not oppose communism in another country because he wanted to change that regime. His only concern was to protect the west, which meant, protecting the American Regime. In this situation, we get no sense that Russia is the same Russia of the distant past. Nevertheless, Jaffa writes:

Do the American people expect their Presidents to take bold action, on the margins of Executive prerogative, whenever they deem such action necessary to fulfill their oath to “‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States’? One may even ask whether a President should not be willing to risk impeachment in order to be worthy of the office. In the last analysis, it is the nature of the crisis—or the nature of one’s understanding of the crisis—which determine the manner of one’s response to this question.4

In these few sentences, Jaffa considers the quality of the statesman as paramount to the question of entering conflict. In our present discontent, America has no competent statesmen. I am gratified that all the incompetent “statesmen” on this issue are for going to war with Russia. It does not not help their cause that many of them or their family members have financial ties to Ukraine. That alone is a strong signal that my position is the correct one.

The fact of the matter is we do not know what Jaffa might think about this particular circumstance. He may not agree with Arnhart; he may not agree with me (or others). Prudence dictates that he would take into account the changing nature of this regime. The nation-state is now at risk to be replaced by a new world order, and we do know that Jaffa despised the emerging new order as did Codevilla and Rood.

If there is one thing that Jaffa admired about the best regime, it was its protection of property, not just the physical, but the inalienable. We have property in our rights, and own our own bodies; we have a right to keep that which we earn by the sweat of our brow. Those who want us involved in this conflict are the same as those clamor for the Great Reset, which, eliminates property in total. It should be no surprise that in order to change our regime, that the control over the education and information of the public, including all its media outlets, will make the blue pill go down easier. Jaffa noted in this regard:

A universal tyranny, perfected by science, will guarantee a docile population, perfectly amensable to suggestions by the rulers. This is what the new ‘socialist man’ will be. He will be perfectly free and perfectly equal in the sense that he will be perfectly programmed to believe that he is free and equal. If the programming succeeds—as indeed it might, for many, and for a long time—then there would be no basis in the soul of socialist man for hostility, aggression, ambition, or pride.5

Does anything describe the aims of the modern left (globalist/ruling class/oligarchy) than this? I mentioned above Klaus Schwab’s we will own nothing and love it. We will love it only if we are programmed to do so.

In “Religion and the Commonweal,” Strauss recognized that the modern world presented new emerging powers that could be employed in the service of the west’s destruction by their “broadcast” of a coordinated message that undermined it. That is programming, and Strauss was concerned about its influential power to instill ignoble lies.

Jaffa wrote in 1991 in a response to a letter sent by Arnhart and a colleague that,

I should mention finally that, although I cite Leo Strauss repeatedly as the ground of my assertions, I do not claim Strauss’s authority for the conclusions I draw from them. Other students of Leo Strauss draw very different conclusions—indeed, in some cases opposite conclusions—from his writings than I have done. I only say here—as elsewhere—what I believe to be true, and what in Strauss’s writings has led me to think as I do. Others must judge whether, in thinking as I do, I think truly.

Jaffa had the political prudence to note that what he wrote was a reflection of what he thought Strauss was teaching. Jaffa was generous to his former teacher, not seeking to speak in his name what he would believe about particular political issues well after his death.

If only more people followed Jaffa’s example.

American Savage

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