The Election Concerning Technology

No one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crises of society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid the folly and live his life in order.

― Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism

Technological Rule

“I saw some of the turning beauties of the sky/ And we came out to see, once more, the stars.”[1] So concludes Dante’s voyage through hell in the first part of his Divine Comedy. After witnessing the numerous sinners (many who compare with the presidential candidates) – the lustful, the violent, the haters, the liars, the fraudulent, and the betrayers to kin and country – Dante exits the underworld with renewed hope and embarks upon his upward journey. If only our own journey could offer us similar hope. Pity the Americans who have suffered months of being bespattered by the sins and corruption of their presidential candidates. The anger of the electorate is in no small way related to the revulsion they feel for having to take responsibility for their choice between two cretinous individuals, and pondering how their choice implicates them in the corruption of their republic. Unlike Dante who enjoys the protection of Virgil and Beatrice in his voyage, the public corruption is also their own. I wonder if they also have the wherewithal to resist the corruption. This essay is an effort to diagnose its sources and nature.

This has been the election concerning technology. I am not only referring to the way Wikileaks, Access Hollywood, and Anthony Wiener’s laptop replaced genuine deliberation during the campaign. Instead my title refers to philosopher Martin Heidegger’s famous 1954 essay, “The Question Concerning Technology,” whereby he argues that technology and technological management is the civilizational destiny of the West. Technology here is not simply smart phones and electric cars, but refers to the distinctive form of rationalism that increasingly governs the behavior and politics of not just the West but also on a global scale. That distinctive mode of governance is variously called cybernetics (kubernētēs, the helmsman), administration, or management. Recall the term “management” derives from the Latin word for hand (manus) as in the hand that physically leads a horse, or you. Consider too how economic globalization goes hand in hand with rule by managers, and the relative success authoritarian regimes have in sacrificing individual freedoms for economic prosperity.

Management differs from politics, the activity of the free. Technology saps the basis for our common lives together, or political friendship. A generation ago Canadian philosopher George Parkin Grant explained how the world managed by technology can have little place for the language of justice.[2] We now speak of “values” instead of justice, and preferences instead of goods. As a result, as Peter Emberley has recently written, “we have come to live in a world filled with rage, presumption, and excessive forbearance, loosely held together by a rootless cosmopolitanism, and the soft values of tolerance . . . ”[3] Canadians as much as Americans are jostled, manipulated, beclowned, corrupted, made callow, and divided and conquered by our Machiavellian managers and the micro-campaigners in their employ, and so find it increasingly difficult to practice self-government and political friendship. Machiavellian fraud is the mode of governance when justice and political friendship are rejected. Political unity is expressed as the fearful awe and even religious worship citizens owe the state, as Thomas Hobbes predicted when he called Leviathan a “mortal god” who would be both the religious as well as scientific authority of the technological commonwealth.[4]

Technological rule represents the interpenetration of wisdom with power, something few before the modern age thought possible or advisable. The rationality of technology is not that of Plato or Aristotle that asks what is the good for human beings and how to obtain it. Nor is it the Enlightenment rationalism that denies we can agree upon the good and so treats reason as servant of the passions. Rather, technology is about efficiency, the bringing together of means and ends to the point at which they interpenetrate: means become ends, and ends become means. As a civilization, we have embraced technology as our destiny, Canadians and Americans included. We disdain the messiness – the partisanship- of parliamentary democracy and instead favor centralized rule by experts in our bureaucracy and legal guardians because they are said to make things more efficient and more inclusive.

But to say we have embraced technology means we always had a choice not to embrace it. Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s rationalist utopia in the Republic illuminates most clearly the problem of the direct rule of reason in politics, even though today’s technology differs greatly from the rule by philosophers. Aristotle rejected the direct rule of reason as both impractical and unjust, though these two reasons end up being identical. Plato’s utopia – which by the way he has Socrates claim is laughable – is impractical because the direct rule of reason by philosophers (or experts as today we would say) depends on there always being enough wise people to rule. It is unjust because politics depends upon political prudence being shared as widely as possible.

Instead of creating a just society, the direct rule by reason is tyranny. Today’s administrative state depends upon a technocratic education that falls well short of Plato’s education for just rulers, and the neglect of civic education by public school systems falls short of Aristotle’s insistence that education be the concern of the polis.[5] Even so, my concern with direct rule of reason – whether that of Plato’s philosopher-kings or that of technology –  is not new. Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, made much the same point when he warned about despotism arising out of modern democracy.

Two Versions of Technological Rule

The campaign between Clinton and Trump was over how best to respond to the global management by technology. One might also regard them as two different forms of Gnosticism. Clinton represents the new Silicon Valley Google economy composed of workers who look at screens instead of work with their hands, the leader of the administrative state’s class of guardians, of Hobbesian despotic rule over the unborn,[6] and the defenders of open borders for immigrants and trade. She represents the “progressive” side of the rule of technology, of those comfortable with the universal, homogeneous state. Thus she would have continued Obama’s posture of post-partisan, post-materialist politics that treats politics as administration, and treated opposition to its cosmopolitanism not as principled but as “phobic,” “regressive,” and of course “deplorable.”

Donald Trump, the former Democrat, represents both a rejection against managerial rule, but also its continuation. In his victory speech he referred less to his party than to his “movement,” one that, like all movements, is centered upon its leader and presents itself as non-ideological (or post-partisan, which was Obama’s version). A lot of his populist style is demagogic, but it was that of a democratic demagogue transgressing the boundaries of civility, decorum, and even lawfulness, and so appealed to all kinds of “authenticity”-loving liberal democrats who took him more seriously than literally. Regarding him as Nazi or fascist, as the Canadian NDP has done, reflects a high degree of political illiteracy.[7] Also, bear in mind that he is a devotee of Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking, a belief held by many management types who think that by repeating oneself enough that reality will somehow conform to one’s wishes.[8] Trump would thus continue the trend of wedding the imperial presidency to the postmodern superstition that reality is composed of nothing but words. His obtuseness to reality and facts is a manifestation of this.

Like all leaders of populist movements, he claims a legitimacy over and against the central representative institution of the US government, Congress. However, like his predecessor, Trump will find himself powerless if he fails to comprehend that he can do very little without the cooperation of Congress. Congress as a whole may be even less respected by Americans than the presidency, but Americans are loyal to their individual members of Congress. Despite the orange wave, all politics remains local and Congress remains the center of gravity of the American regime. House and Senate Republicans – many of whom have very different policy views and have different bases of their own power– will need to bear the lessons of 2010 in mind when Democrats lost control of Congress, never to regain it.[9] They will need to play a careful game, going along with his agenda only so far as they can and are willing, but they will likely desert him as soon as his initiatives conflict with their own views and those of their constituents.

Even so, since at least the 1930s, the office of the presidency has morphed from something initially conceived of as modest into an “elected king” whose powers seems to include both capacity for apocalyptic “hope and change,” as well as being the sponge that absorbs the hopes and dreams of self-projecting millions of citizens. As a result, presidential rhetoric is now about making vague, meaningless statements that indulge the narcissism of citizens who are led to interpret those statements in conformity with their own desires.  This is not only a sign of political and constitutional degeneracy, but also of a citizenry that has become infantilized and petulant.

Trump’s populist “movement” may result in fewer economic regulations and legalized pot. But it is not about supporting the habits and institutions of self-government. Even so, in his rejection of cosmopolitanism, he represents the nationalist side of the rule of technology. We Canadians should note he would find much to admire in our own restrictive immigration policies, which may explain why an Ipsos poll last week showed 77% of Canadians would support a candidate who advocates tighter immigration controls.[10] He displayed xenophobic and misogynist demagoguery. However, that he was able to attract voters who in 2008 and 2012 voted for Obama, and that he received a greater number of Latino votes than Romney in 2012 while receiving fewer overall votes, suggests racism does not play a major role in his popularity.[11]

That a majority of white women voted for Trump suggests they deemed him less vicious than Clinton and her dubious political ethics, including among other things leaving at least 20% of the world’s uranium supply in Putin’s hands in return for private pecuniary advantage.[12] Clinton seemed also to have failed to convince American women she was a credible standard-bearer of feminism. #IBelieve never applied to the Lewinskys and Broaddricks of the world. She could hardly be a sympathetic figure when keeping Bill around was her path to wealth and power, sordidly obtained. Thus Trump’s vicious character, who does not even try to be sympathetic, paradoxically worked to his advantage in this regard. Clinton appealed to their identity and failed, while Trump seems to have successfully appealed to their economic interests (while playing identity politics to many other voter groups).

Trump’s criticisms of free trade appeals to those who work with their hands and who fear their jobs are leaving for elsewhere. While he won the white college-educated vote, Trump appeals to Rick Santorum’s Blue Collar Conservatives.[13] Bear in mind there are more blue collar workers (on both sides of ideological spectrum) than there are college educated people in the US. These people admire hard work, want to own their own business, and don’t mind people getting rich, though they do mind people with only book-learning telling them what to do –by they egghead professors, managerial corporate bosses, or government bureaucrats.[14] Their Canadian equivalent is the Tim Hortons crowd who dream of an ATV and F-150 in their garages. It is no wonder that Stephen Harper, who successfully courted this constituency in Canada, is now in high demand among top level Republicans wanting to know how better also to appeal to the working class.[15] Moreover, Trump’s victory speech channeled Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 “Forgotten Man” New Deal speech by promising to deliver for the 1 in 7 American male “unworkers” who are not merely unemployed but whose numbers do not show up on unemployment statistics because they have actually dropped out of the workforce altogether.[16]

Even so, the one crucial thing that neither Trump nor his supporters seem to realize is that increased use of automation and robotics eliminates more manufacturing jobs than do Chinese or Mexican cheap labour.[17] The US now has more people working for government than in the manufacturing sector.[18] The social and psychological costs borne by those who have been made redundant, with many removing themselves completely from the labour market to live a life of video-gaming and cannabis in the basements of their parents and other caregivers, have yet to be fully determined.[19] But one should not be surprised by their attraction to Trump’s siren songs, just as those like them were attracted to Obama’s siren song of “hope and change” in 2008.

However, if Heidegger is right that technology is our destiny, then Trump’s scapegoating of NAFTA, immigrants, and other foreign influences is beside the point. But one cannot scapegoat an abstract noun like “technology” nor “destiny.” Neither Trump nor his supporters have shown any interest in smashing the technologies that have made them redundant. Indeed, his richest donor and member of his transition team, Silicon Valley oligarch Peter Thiel, enthusiastically looks forward to the “singularity,” the moment in time when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence.[20] Thiel supports Trump because he thinks Trump’s economic plan is more efficient – the goal of technological management – than Clinton’s plan. Trump’s New Deal-like aim to put the “unworkers” to work rebuilding American infrastructure is humane but also fits with the goal of efficiency, which isn’t always humane.

Both Clinton and Trump then are united by the aims of technological rule that collapses politics into management. What unites them is their utter incoherence in terms of the purposes of politics, which is reflected in their incapacity for public deliberation. Trump’s incoherence requires no elaboration. Just listen to him and think of Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking. Clinton’s incoherence was best expressed in one of the Wikileaked emails where she complains that her speechwriters have not given her any overall theme. As Charles Krauthammer asked, “[i]sn’t that the candidate’s job?” In another leaked email, one of her aides, Joel Benenson, asked, “Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?”[21] Krauthammer complains of the “soullessness of her campaign – all ambition and entitlement.”

Yet “soullessness” is the very outcome of a politics ruled by technology. The interpenetration of means and ends means life becomes what Thomas Hobbes calls, “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”[22] Trump and Clinton are today’s face of this.

The Challenges of Ruling a Technological Society

In the Politics, Aristotle painstakingly distinguishes the life of securing life’s necessities, which he associates with what goes on in the household, from the life of freedom, which he associates with the life of the citizen engaged in public deliberation.[23] He cautions us about the danger of forgetting about freedom and letting political community get swallowed up by a project of limitless acquisition which is one step away from imperialism and tyranny where, like modern technology, the distinction between means and ends is obliterated. Genuine politics is only possible when citizens can exercise purposeful use of goods obtained with a sense that acquisition of such goods should be limited, and where citizens can partake in meaningful enjoyment of those goods in the form of leisurely political friendship.

So Aristotle was worried about political life getting patterned after the household because a ruler who treats the political community as his personal household, and his subjects as children, is a tyrant. Indeed, this is Tocqueville’s warning, made in the 1830s, about democratic despotism. He pointed out that it would not be harsh and violent, but instead it would be a “soft despotism” that takes care of the lonely and isolated citizens who have become little more than children. Some view the rise of the administrative state, whose regulatory powers Congress has permitted to stand in for congressional and therefore accountable lawmaking, in America as a fulfilment of Tocqueville’s warning.[24] What some call the “post familial” election seems to confirm this: progressives offer the state as a substitute for the cradle to grave protection offered by the now thinning family, while the right expresses ethno-racial anxiety over an imagined future that seems culturally alien.[25] Trump’s “movement” is in part composed of the children of this soft despotism; the other children are out firebombing the streets of Portland when they are not receiving plush-toy therapy from their university administrators.

Trump’s rhetoric flirted with violence and he appeals to the alt-right (a diverse movement of conservatives, inspired by the ideas of “Oswald Spengler, H.L Mencken, Julius Evola, Sam Francis, and the paleoconservative movement that rallied around the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan,” and united by their rejection of managerial, cosmopolitan liberalism[26]) while Democratic operatives have sown violence at his rallies.[27] Writing during a comparable time in U.S. history in the 1960s when the radical left was violently protesting against the oligarchy and the Vietnam War, and was intoxicated by the radical dreams of Marx, Nietzsche, Gramsci, and Fanon, Hannah Arendt claimed that such violence becomes attractive when genuine politics is no longer possible and when people feel they have no say in how they are ruled.[28] She was a woman of the left, but as a political philosopher she disagreed with many of her fellow travelers plans for income redistribution and even voting rights because she regarded the empowering of the administrative state and its clients, and the nature of its rule over the American people as a matter of “housekeeping.” Like Aristotle, Arendt feared the collapse of politics into technical management.

Aristotle had the utopia of Plato’s Republic in mind when he thought about the tyranny of treating the political community as a large household. The attempt to administer politics directly by reason ends up undermining politics altogether, and the attempt to impose such a high degree of unity as Socrates’ imaginary city ends up breaking it apart. Indeed, the extended family of Plato’s Guardians has nothing in common with the artisans and workers over which they rule.

Likewise, the administrative class of bureaucrats living in the Washington, DC, area, regard the rest of America as “morons” and have little to do with them.[29] Like Plato’s Guardians, federal bureaucrats live separately in their own neighbourhoods as their fellow bureaucrats, send their kids to the same schools, eat in the same restaurants, and so forth. Of course, the American artisans and workers living outside the DC area feel the same way toward their guardians. Earlier this year a quarter of federal workers told a poll they would resign if Trump were elected president.[30] Like Hollywood stars who threaten to move to Canada, one waits in vain for them to carry through on their threats.

The United States is a highly siloed or honey-combed society where distrust of institutions is matched by record high levels of distrust in others, not to mention abject ignorance of politics and the principles of American constitutionalism.[31]  And as Joel Kotkin has frequently documented, it’s also one where Americans in the hinterland resent being objects of management by distant regulators for a good that is perhaps clear to no one. In no small way is the popularity of Trump, as well as Bernie Sanders, the result of this apolitical but highly politicized situation of having two cities, and perhaps three or four more, at a standoff in the American Republic.[32]

The greatest challenge for President-elect Trump will be to figure out a way to reunite these multiple cities dwelling in the bosom of a single nation-state. He needs to remember he lost the popular vote by a substantial margin, by approximately 1.5%.[33] In Roger Scruton’s words, Trump has power but lacks authority, and therefore means his power is extremely brittle.[34] In the short term, he will have to stop riots without turning thugs and paid henchmen into martyrs. In the medium term, he’ll have to work with Congress to leaven free market goals for economic efficiency, with more interventionist measures such as federal wage subsidies, targeted restraints on trade, and parts of Obamacare that Trump’s core constituency actually likes.[35] In the long term, he will have to promote the moral character of Americans for self-governance and political friendship. I confess I do not see anything in Trump’s background to suggest he is prepared for this great task.

The damage Trump’s demagogic rhetoric did during the campaign is incalculable but good can come out of that muck if he so chooses. He was able to cut through the double-speak of political correctness wrought by an overweening progressivism and identity politics that shuts down discourse by labeling opposing viewpoints at some variant of “phobia.” His crudeness absorbed the brunt of those attacks, which at this point has emboldened both those who are genuinely “phobic” but also those with insightful but politically incorrect viewpoints have found it was not worth their while to get attacked. If – and this is a big if – he as president can now demonstrate that the opposite of political correctness is not boorishess, but open debate and willingness for rational discussion, then some good will have come from his campaign.

The Life Cycle of Regimes and the Responsibility of Citizens

As Plato, Aristotle, and Tocqueville show, regimes degenerate on account of their highest ideals. Democracies degenerate because they seek greater freedom and equality. It is possible to blame the utter unworthiness of both candidates on a primary system that has become too democratic and populist.[36] Trump’s demagoguery appeals to the democratic taste for transgressing boundaries and of thumbing one’s nose at social mores of gentlemanliness and civility. His dialectical counterpart that is found in the political correctness of social justice warriors can only hasten that decline.

The collapse of politics into management and administration results from the collapse of ends into means. Citizens can only deliberate about the means of securing the good life when the good life can be ascertained. Citizens typically organize themselves into parties and factions to express their opinions concerning the best means of obtaining the good life, and this is the basis upon which deliberation occurs. The polity that Aristotle prefers shares with the principles of modern liberal democracy the tolerance for the messiness and contradictions that go along with broader participation of citizens in self-government.

Tocqueville saw the importance of town halls and civil associations as schools of civic virtue for democratic citizens. In Canada, political scientist and and Clerk of the House of Commons (1880-1902) John George Bourinot authored books on the nature of responsible government and parliamentary procedure, but he is best known for Bourinot’s Rules of Order, which govern meetings held by a wide array of civil associations. He recognized that the citizens of parliamentary democracy needed experience in self-government and parliamentary procedure, which his Rules provided when they met in their union halls, board meetings, and so forth.[37] While messier than management by experts, deliberative democracy avoids the extremes of technological snobbery and a public stupidity and demagoguery that results from a bureaucratic management.

Identity politics is the manifestation of a citizenry made stupid through being managed. The stereotype of the white, xenophobic, poorly educated, male sexist supporter of Trump corresponds to the stereotype of the resentful female supporter of Clinton who, despite a lot of evidence, convinces herself that Clinton’s legal troubles and the accusations of fraud exist only because she’s a woman. It’s the National Rifle Association v. the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, with the former hanging onto their bibles and guns and the latter clutching their abortion vacuums and iPads playing John Oliver.

Whether the American electorate is doomed to suffer increased corruption or whether it can be saved is the question. Degeneration is not for certain, but it may be likely. When faced with the same question and at a similar moment faced by Dante – at a place far more profound and dangerous than the voting booth where Americans recently made their choice – Socrates responded, “Virtue has no master; each will have more or less of it by honoring or dishonoring it. The blame belongs to the one who chooses; the god is blameless” (Republic, 617e). Similarly, Eric Voegelin once wrote that “No one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crises of society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid the folly and live his life in order.”[38] I don’t see a Socrates or Dante, not to mention a Lincoln, on the horizon for the United States. Offer them a prayer and encourage them to rediscover the virtues of friendship and neighbourliness.  They need it.

Notes

[1] Dante, Inferno, translated by Anthony Esolen, (New York: Random House, 2002), canto 34.138-9.

[2] George Grant, Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America, (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1991 [1969]); Technology and Justice, (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1991 [1986]).

[3] Peter Emberley, “Precarious Restorations: Religious Life in the Contemporary World,” in Hunting and Weaving, Empiricism and Political Philosophy, edited by Thomas W. Heilke and John von Heyking, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press 2013), 137.

[4] “There is no doubt but any kind, in case he were skilful in the sciences, might by the same right of his office, read lectures of hem himself, by which he authorizeth others to read them in the universities” (Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Edwin Curley, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994), 369.

[5] On elite education in the United States, see William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, (New York: Free Press, 2014). Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012 [1987]) remains the benchmark indictment of American higher education.

[6] “Seeing the infant is first in the power of the mother, so as she may either nourish or expose it, if she nourish it, it oweth its life to the mother, and is therefore obliged to obey her rather than any other, and by consequence the dominion over it is hers…. [P]reservation of life being the end for which one man becomes subject to another, every man is supposed to promise obedience to him in whose power it is to save or destroy him” (Hobbes, Leviathan, 129-30).

[7] Waller Newell, “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” FifteenEightyFour Blog, July 5, 2016 (http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2016/07/is-donald-trump-a-fascist/); John Paul Tasker, “Tom Mulcair Calls Donald Trump a ‘Fascist,’ Urges Trudeau to Denounce Him,” CBC News, March 30, 2016 (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-donald-trump-fascist-1.3513166).

[8] Gwenda Blair, “How Norman Vincent Peale Taught Donald Trump to Worship Himself,” Politico, October 6, 2015 (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/donald-trump-2016-norman-vincent-peale-213220).

[9] The Republicans retook the House in 2010 and Senate in 2014.

[10] Francis Buckley, “What if Americans Mattered?” Real Clear Policy, November 1, 2016 (http://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2016/11/01/what_if_americans_mattered_1760.html);  “You’re More Conservative Than You Think,” National Post, April 22, 2016, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/f-h-buckley-youre-more-conservative-than-you-think ; http://globalnews.ca/news/3061088/canadians-disagree-with-donald-trumps-victory-but-agree-with-some-of-his-policy-ipsos-poll/

[11] Jeremy Carl, “The Trump Historic Meltdown Never Happened,” National Review, November 9, 2016 (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442016/donald-trump-hispanic-vote-republican-presidential-nominees-average)

[12] Danny Hayes and Jennifer L. Lawless, “There’s Much Less Gender Bias in Politics Than You Think,” Washington Post, May 24, 2016 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/24/how-much-does-gender-bias-affect-u-s-elections/);  Nancy L. Cohen, “Sorry Hilary, Sexism Had Nothing to Do With It,” National Post, November 17, 2016 (http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/nancy-l-cohen-sorry-hillary-sexism-had-nothing-to-do-with-it); Tristin Hopper, “The white vote — women especially — propelled Trump to victory over the first woman running for president,” National Post, November 9, 2016 (http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/news/world/the-white-vote-women-especially-propel-trump-to-victory-over-the-first-woman-running-for-president&pubdate=2016-11-09); Kimberly Strassel, “The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins,” Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2016 (http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-press-buries-hillary-clintons-sins-1476401308); Paul Mirengoff, “Memo Sheds New Light On Clinton-Russia Uranium Scandal,” Powerline Blog, August 26, 2016 (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/memo-sheds-new-light-on-clinton-russia-uranium-scandal.php); Jo Beker and Mike McIntire, “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal,” New York Times, April 23, 2015 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1)

[13] Rick Santorum, Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works, (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2014); Fred Barnes, “Present at Creation?” Weekly Standard, March 14, 2016 (http://www.weeklystandard.com/present-at-the-creation/article/2001406); Rick Santorum, “Trump must now deliver for working families,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 13, 2016 (http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20161113_Santorum__Trump_must_now_deliver_for_working_families.html?mobi=true).

[14] Joan C. Williams, “What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class,” Harvard Business Review, November 10, 2016 (https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class).

[15] Tristan Hopper, “Harper returns! The former prime minister finally delivers a public speech … in Las Vegas,” National Post, April 12, 2016 (http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/harper-returns-the-former-prime-minister-finally-delivers-a-public-speech-in-las-vegas).

[16] Nicholas Eberstadt, “America’s Unseen Social Crisis: Men Without Work,” Time, September 22 2016 (http://time.com/4504004/men-without-work/); Eberstadt, Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis, (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2016); “The mystery of America’s missing male workers,” The Week, November 5, 2016 (http://theweek.com/articles/659245/mystery-americas-missing-male-workers); David P. Goldman, “To understand Trump, look at Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Asia Times, November 9, 2016 (http://www.atimes.com/understand-trump-look-franklin-d-roosevelt/)

[17] David Rotman, “How Destroying Jobs,” MIT Technology Review, June 12, 2013, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/; Derek Thompson, A World Without Work,” Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/; but see Katie Allen, “Technology Has Created More Jobs Than it Has Destroyed,” The Guardian, August 18, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-created-more-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census;  see also Peter Lawler, Stuck With Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future, (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2005).

[18] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/government-workers-now-outnumber-manufacturing-workers-9977000

[19] Derek Thompson, “What Are Young, Non-working Men Doing?” Atlantic Monthly, July 25, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/what-are-young-non-working-men-doing/492890/

[20] Peter Thiel, “What Trump Represents Isn’t Crazy and it’s Not Going Away,” transcript of speech delivered to National Press Club, Real Clear Politics, October 31, 2016 (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/31/peter_thiel_what_trump_represents_isnt_crazy_and_its_not_going_away.html); Thiel, “The Education of a Libertarian,” Cato Unbound, April 13, 2009 (https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian); Elmo Keep, “The Strange and Conflicting Worldviews of Silicon Valley Billionaire Peter Thiel,” Fusion, June 22, 2016, http://fusion.net/story/312592/peter-thiel-transhumanist/

[21] Charles Krauthammer, “Who I’m Voting For, and Why,” New York Daily News, October 20, 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/charles-krauthammer-voting-article-1.2838947

[22] Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 11.

[23] My discussion of Aristotle in this essay has been informed by Waller R. Newell, “Oligarchy and Oikonomia: Aristotle’s Ambivalent Assessment of Private Property,” in On Oligarchy: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics, edited by David Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 3-23.

[24] See Paul Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Philip Hamburger, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

[25] Ross Douthat, “The Post-Familial Election” New York Times, November 5 2016 (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/the-post-familial-election.html?_r=0); Joel Kotkin et al., The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity’s Future?, (Singapore: Civil Service College, 2012) (https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/_files/The%20Rise%20of%20Post-Familialism.pdf).

[26] Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopolous, “An Establishment Conservatives Guide to the Alt-Right,” Breitbart.com, March 29, 2016 (http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/).

[27] Austin Bay, “Democratic Party Operative Robert Creamer Used Terror to Wage War on Honesty,” Observer, October 25, 2016 (http://observer.com/2016/10/democratic-party-operative-robert-creamer-used-terror-to-wage-war-on-honesty/).

[28] Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, (New York: Penguin, 1965), ch. 6.

[29] Jeff Guo, “Washington’s ‘Governing Elite’ Think Americans are Morons,” Washington Post, October 5, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/05/washingtons-governing-elite-actually-think-americans-are-morons/. Jennifer Bachner and Benjamin Ginsberg, What Washington Gets Wrong: The Unelected Officials Who Actually Run the Government and Their Misconceptions about the American People, (Boston: Prometheus Books, 2016).

[30]  Nick Gass, “Poll: 25 percent of federal employees would quit under Trump presidency,” Politico, February 1, 2016 (http://www.politico.com/blogs/iowa-caucus-2016-live-updates/2016/02/federal-employees-quit-if-trump-president-218544)

[31] Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, (New York: Crown Forum, 2012); American Enterprise Institute, “Politics, Friendships, and Campaign 2016,” October 2016, http://www.aei.org/publication/aei-political-report-politics-friendships-and-campaign-2016/; Nathaniel Persily and Jon Cohen, “Americans are losing faith in democracy — and in each other,” Washington Post, October 14, 2016, (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-are-losing-faith-in-democracy–and-in-each-other/2016/10/14/b35234ea-90c6-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html?utm_term=.95b30d490e7b); Rebecca Burgess, “Disgusted with Trump v. Clinton? Blame America’s Civic Education,” The Hill, October 4, 2016, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/education/299261-disgusted-with-trump-v-clinton-blame-americas-civic-education#.V_a8iGTB1Yg.facebook ; Mark Perry, “New Survey Reveals That Young People Have Little Understanding of Collectivism and its Dark Deadly History,” American Enterprise Institute Ideas, October 18, 2016, http://www.aei.org/publication/new-survey-reveals-that-young-americans-have-little-understanding-of-collectivism-and-its-dark-history/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=perry

[32] Joel Kotkin, The New Class Conflict, (Candor, NY: Telos Publishing, 2014).

[33] David Leonhart, “Clinton’s Substantial Popular Vote Win,” New York Times, November 11, 2016 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/opinion/clintons-substantial-popular-vote-win.html?smid=fb-share)

[34] Roger Scruton, “The Trump Card,” BBC4 Radio, November 2016 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b081tkmc).

[35] Charles Krauthammer, “How the New Republican Majority Can Succeed,” National Review, November 10, 2016 (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442103/donald-trump-republican-party-future?utm_source=nr&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=republican-majority-succeed&utm_content=krauthammer)

[36] Emma Green, “The Downside of Democracy,” Atlantic Monthly, May 29, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-downside-of-democracy/484415/ ; James Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

[37] For details, see my “Liberal Education Embedded in Civic Education for Responsible Government:  The Case of John George Bourinot,” in Liberal Education, Civic Education, and the Canadian Regime: Past Principles and Present Challenges, Edited By David Livingstone. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2015. Pp. 44-76.

[38] Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, (Wilmington, DE:  Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books, 2004 [1968]), 17.

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