Economic Patriotism

In an essay first published in Chronicles in 2006 and collected in the Chronicles Press volume Life, Literature, and Lincoln, the late Tom Landess relates a story about Arizona Sen. John McCain. While stumping in South Carolina for the Republican presidential nomination, the Mad Bomber encountered a textile-mill worker who was not a fan of Senator McCain’s support for free trade. The millworker had made a good living in textiles, and he had hoped his children would as well, but just as Bruce Springsteen sang two decades earlier about the textile mills of New Jersey, down in South Carolina “the foreman says those jobs are going, boys / and they ain’t coming back.”

It didn’t have to be that way, and the millworker knew it. So, for that matter, did John McCain, but having done his damnedest to change the economic landscape not just of South Carolina but of the United States as a whole, he wasn’t about to back down. “Sir,” he said to the millworker,

I did not know that your ambitions were for your children to work in a textile mill, to be honest with you. I would rather have them work in a high-tech industry. I would rather have them work in the computer industry. I would rather give them the kind of education and training that’s necessary in order for them to really [sic] have prosperous and full lives.

I thought of this anecdote when Wayne Allensworth sent me a link to a piece by National Review “roving editor” Kevin D. Williamson. Entitled “If Your Town Is Failing, Just Go,” and subtitled “A prescription for impoverished communities,” the article reminded me why I quit reading National Review over a quarter of a century ago.

Williamson’s piece was, in other words, nothing new, and if it strikes me now as more horrific than similar articles NR had published in the mid–1980’s, it is only because it hardly seems possible that the editors and writers of National Review could have matured so little in the intervening years.

A few short selections from the first three paragraphs of Kevin Williamson’s article will set the stage:

The town where my parents grew up and where my grandparents lived no longer exists. Phillips, Texas, is a ghost town. Before that it was a company town, a more or less wholly owned subsidiary of the Phillips Petroleum Company. . . .

Phillips, Inc., in the end decided it had no need for Phillips, Texas, and the town was scrubbed right off the map. The local homeowners owned their houses but not the land they sat on, which belonged to the company. . . . Many of the residents of Phillips were uneager to be evicted from their homes, and they sued the company with the help of the famously theatrical Texas trial lawyer Racehorse Haynes, who informed the good people of Phillips: “They might whup us fair and square, but they better bring lunch.” Lunch was served, and Phillips is just gone.

It was the right thing to do. Some towns are better off dead.

It turns my stomach even now to read those words. Phillips, Texas, was a town of about 2,000 souls—the same as my hometown of Spring Lake, Michigan—and Kevin Williamson is a few years younger than I am. But one of the reasons I quit subscribing to National Review while Mr. Williamson was still in high school and turned, in June 1989, to Chronicles instead is because I saw what deindustrialization had done to the small communities of my native Midwest starting in the early 1970’s, and I realized even then that the mainstream conservative movement and the Republican Party had neither the will nor the desire to stop it. When it suits their purposes, the media and politicians of both parties focus on the closing of factories and the loss of jobs, but that is never the end of the destruction; it is only the beginning. When the presidential candidates move on to the next state and the TV cameras follow them, the men and women who have lived in the same town, and perhaps even the same house, for decades and generations are left alone to make the painful decision to uproot their families, to leave behind loved ones and friends and the places that have formed the fabric of their lives and memories in order to do what’s necessary to provide for their children.

To reduce everything that those heart-wrenching decisions entail to the imperious imperative “If Your Town Is Failing, Just Go” is proof—as if we needed any more—that many, even most, of those who call themselves conservatives in this country have no desire to conserve anything other than the political power of the central state and the economic power of multinational—or, rather, transnational—corporations.

That, as I say, is one of the main reasons why I started reading Chronicles, which led, 20 years ago, to my joining the editorial staff of Chronicles, and my desire to find a way to halt the deindustrialization of the Midwest is why I have consistently, over the better part of the last three decades, referred to myself as an “economic nationalist.” The recognition that there is something worth conserving beyond the almighty dollar—that small towns and family farms and the neighborhoods of big cities, and all of the residents thereof, are valuable in ways that cannot be measured on a balance sheet and make little or no “impact” on Gross Domestic Product—lies at the heart of any conservatism worthy of the name. There will always be—as there always have been—some people, of course, who must face the painful choice of whether to stay and struggle in the place where they were planted or to tear themselves up in the hope of forging a better (or at least less bad) future for their family, but the idea that this should be the natural and normal situation of most people in most places in most times is quite simply monstrous. Kevin Williamson would no doubt accuse me (in words he used in his article) of the “cheap sentimentalism that informs the Trump-Buchanan-Sanders view of globalization,” but the connection between civilization and cultivation is obvious to any student of history, and equally obvious is the reality that the phrase “nomadic civilization” is an oxymoron.  Nomads cultivate nothing, much less civilization, and they generally leave little but destruction in their wake. Such matters do not concern Williamson, however, because he has no desire ever to return to Phillips, Texas, much less to visit Rockford, Illinois.

A decade ago, I wrote dozens of Rockford Files columns in Chronicles documenting the shuttering of factories and the hemorrhaging of jobs in my adopted hometown, and it would be wonderful to say that I quit writing them because it all came to an end. It has not; and while the rate of deindustrialization may have slowed, the destruction that comes after the jobs are lost continues apace.

Yet trying to think more deeply about all of this over the past several years has led me to conclude, reluctantly and unhappily, that the McCains and the Williamsons, and the Bushes and the Clintons, and all of the other supporters, in government and in business, of trade policies that have laid waste to America’s industrial base have won. They achieved what they wanted; those jobs “ain’t coming back” to your hometown or mine.

It’s not simply that the necessary change in trade policy at the national level is unlikely to happen, even if, say, Donald Trump is elected president; it’s that even if such a change in policy were to occur, it wouldn’t bring those particular jobs back, because they no longer exist.

I spent scores of hours working on that collection of Tom Landess’s writing, and it was Landess who helped that realization slowly sink in. Here is what he wrote immediately after quoting Senator McCain’s response to the millworker:

Putting aside the effrontery of publicly lecturing a father on what’s best for his children, Senator McCain was up to his chin in shallow water. Like earlier boosters of textile mills, he [that is, John McCain] clearly believed in the immortality of present economic conditions, the inviolability of the fragile industrial dream. He drew the wrong lesson from the father’s complaint. The global marketplace is just as dicey as Las Vegas, whether the industry be textiles or high-tech or computers.

In other words, for those who value rootedness, who understand that civilization requires cultivation and will never arise among nomads, the basic problem that we face is endemic to industrialism itself. Economic conditions change. Manufacturing processes change.  The shape of industry has changed, and will continue to change. The plum job of yesterday and the plum job of today have one thing in common: They’re both unlikely to be the plum job of tomorrow.

For four decades, those of us who have called ourselves economic nationalists have been fighting the same battle, even though the conditions have changed. We speak of jobs “going overseas,” as if this has occurred in a one-to-one ratio—one job lost in Rockford or Cleveland; one job gained in Beijing or Seoul. Yes, one reason American multinationals lobbied hard for trade agreements that allowed them to move manufacturing operations overseas was that they could calculate the cost savings on labor and benefits. But they were counting on other savings and advantages as well, and those are much more important when we talk about bringing manufacturing—and especially manufacturing jobs—back to this country.

The mechanization and robotization of manufacturing was easier to accomplish when building new factories in other countries rather than attempting to retrofit existing factories here. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why it was easier for foreign automakers to open operations here in the United States in the 1980’s and 90’s than it was for domestic automakers to increase production: Starting from scratch provided a tremendous competitive advantage, even within the same industry in the same country.

We can see this even on a more micro level. At the same time that Rockford has suffered the loss of numerous factories and tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, the city has seen new manufacturing startups arise and do well. But the new companies are starting from scratch and begin by investing in technology that reduces their need for labor, so a startup with revenue roughly equivalent to that of an existing manufacturer may employ as few as one fifth of the people as the existing manufacturer does.

But wasn’t that Senator McCain’s point? Aren’t all of those people who used to work in what we might call “legacy factories” better off when they lose their jobs and are forced to switch professions? And if they can’t find new jobs where they currently live, shouldn’t they “Just go,” as Kevin Williamson commands?

Absolutely—if you believe that man is made for the economy, and not the economy for man. But if the reason you call yourself an “economic nationalist” is that you believe there’s something more to life than being an interchangeable cog in the great industrial machine—that living among a certain people and in a certain place has value in itself—then you have to face the fact that globalization hasn’t really created a new class of problems but has instead accelerated problems that are inherent in the industrial system itself. And those problems have been obscured by the “national” focus of our economic nationalism.

Consider this: If someone used to work for GM in Michigan, does it matter whether he lost his job because GM opened a new factory in Tennessee, rather than in Mexico or China? If your response is, “Well, at least he could move to Tennessee,” how exactly is your position different from that of Kevin Williamson? If your response is, “Well, at least the cars are still manufactured in this country, so our trade deficit didn’t grow,” then you are essentially saying that man is made for the national economy, and not the nation or the economy for man.

We need to take a step back and consider what it is that we hope to accomplish through our promotion of economic nationalism. Is the only thing we’re concerned about the health of the national economy, measured in terms of job creation, unemployment rates, and trade deficits? If so, then we can keep our focus firmly on Washington, D.C., trade agreements, tariffs, and border-adjusted VATs.

But if, instead, we’re concerned about the disruptive effects that industrialism, exacerbated by globalization, has on families and communities, then it’s time to change our rhetoric and to take a more comprehensive approach. Just as a foreign policy that places the American national interest above the interest of other countries and of international organizations is not only perfectly compatible with federalism at home but can help to ensure it, the economic nationalism that we have promoted for decades is better seen as an integral part of what I now call “economic patriotism.”

You could call it by other names—autarchy, for instance, or subsidiarity—but I prefer the term economic patriotism because it drives home the idea that healthy economic structures should serve a particular people in a particular place.  No, I’m not talking about “Buy American” campaigns, though there is nothing wrong with that and much that is good. I’m talking about local and regional efforts to create sound economies—plural, not singular—that make it possible for people to bloom where they’re planted. To help people understand why it might be to their benefit, and the benefit of their communities, to buy from local producers. To help such producers see the benefits in attempting to meet the needs of their local community first, rather than assume that everything needs to be measured in terms of one’s contribution to the national economy—which really exists only as a series of abstract numbers that provide a sum total of those local and regional economies.

If this sounds utopian or “sentimental,” that in itself is a measure of how far removed economic activity in the United States has become from the reality faced by most people in most places throughout most of history. Midwesterners who shop at Walmart and eat at McDonald’s are astonished at what they see when they walk the streets of the smallest Italian town, because virtually all economic activity in the United States—all the way down to our food production—has become industrialized and thus centralized. Even organic produce is largely grown on factory farms and shipped hundreds or thousands of miles across the country to be sold at a premium in a Whole Foods Market. But when I walk down the street and buy a tomato at my local farmers’ market on a Saturday in August, I pay less than I do in a supermarket for an inferior tomato—and the tomato tastes better than any that’s ever crossed the threshold of Whole Foods.  Chains like Whole Foods are part of the problem, not the solution; those who cannot see that have no idea what the core problem really is.

A local economy that is primarily dependent on national chains and producers is not a local economy at all. It is just another cog in an industrial machine, just another textile mill or auto factory whose days are numbered, just another Phillips, Texas, waiting for lunch to be served.

The underlying problem of the American economy has its roots in the destruction of local and regional cultures. We need to quit treating the economy as an end in itself and view it instead as a new front in the culture war, pouring our efforts into building the economies of our hometowns and regions in ways that will give people a reason and a means to stay in one place. No presidential candidate of either party is going to make this a part of his platform, but Chronicles can and will lead the way, by not simply lamenting the past but highlighting efforts, great and small, from every corner of this country to build a strong economic foundation for the future.

There are times to defend the past at all costs, and there are times when we must build upon it. Many of the cathedrals of Europe were erected not only on the foundations of pagan temples, but in part out of their rubble, by people who understood when to quit propping up an empty shell so that they could dedicate themselves to building a civilization for generations to come.

First published in the March 2016 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

An Epiphany

In most years, Epiphany marks the real beginning of winter here in northern Illinois. November and December roll along, as temperatures drop and the days grow shorter, but the weather that we normally associate with the Upper Midwest — days-long snowstorms, blowing winds, bitter temperatures — make their appearance about the same time as the Wise Men. It’s not unusual to have a less-than-white Christmas — or even to have a green one.

This is not most years. In December, we saw almost as much snow as my parents did, living in the snow belt on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. But repeated thaws and freezings, sunny days and windy evenings, have hardened off the snow banks and left the roads mercifully free of snow and ice.

Not so the sidewalks, which, on this Epiphany, are in the most treacherous shape I can remember. I pick my way cautiously, eyes focused on the ground, skirting around large patches of black ice that are obvious enough in the sunlight but which, I realize with a sense of foreboding, will be invisible as I walk home from work in the northern darkness of Epiphany evening.

Like most Americans, over the years I have abused my body with reckless abandon, shoveling junk food (as well as overly large quantities of more healthy fare) into my maw as if there were no tomorrow. And yet, like most, I’m much more concerned about the dangers to my body while out walking in our winter wonderland. Gluttony sneaks up on us, wears us down so insidiously that we rarely notice until it’s too late; but a misplaced foot on an icy sidewalk can bring consequences that are immediate, severe, and obvious — a bump on the head, a sprained wrist, a cracked rib.

And so we avoid the near occasions of slipping far more painstakingly than we avoid the near occasions of sin. Yet, just as my left foot briefly loses traction, the words of the Baltimore Catechism come back to me:

Q. Of which must we take more care, our soul or our body?
A. We must take more care of our soul than of our body.

Even in the worst of years, the black ice of our winter streets and sidewalks is a sporadic phenomenon, usually obvious (as long as you’re paying attention) and thus avoidable. In the modern world, however, the black ice of our spiritual life surrounds us every day. Worse, even when it’s obvious, we may make little effort to avoid it. Sometimes we even go out of our way to skate on the ice, deluding ourselves into thinking that we will not fall.

And yet, when our recklessness brings us down, the consequences are much worse than a bruise or a broken bone.

Q. Why must we take more care of our soul than of our body?
A. We must take more care of our soul than of our body, because in losing our soul we lose God and everlasting happiness.

As I leave work, the night is perfectly clear, still, and black. Walking down the driveway to the sidewalk, I see that the ground is covered with a fresh coat of snow. It’s not much: somewhere between a quarter- and a half-inch — just enough to lure the unsuspecting walker onto a cloaked patch of black ice. The air is cold, so the snowflakes are small and hard, reducing the friction between my boots and the ground beneath.

I pick my way carefully, wishing that I had paid even closer attention in the morning, so that I might recall where the worst patches are. In the first few blocks, I slip a half-dozen times, and I consider halting and calling my wife to come pick me up. She’s a good woman; she wouldn’t complain — and I could be home and settling down for our Epiphany feast in under ten minutes.

Something in me rebels against the thought. I’ve got less than a mile to go. I can make it; I don’t need help.

I cross another street and start up the next block. One of the few streetlights on this stretch of Harlem Avenue casts a soft yellow glow over glittering snow on the sidewalk ahead, and I remember from my morning walk that one of the most extensive and perfectly smooth patches of black ice lies under that snow. Like the snow covering it, the ice has a perfect natural beauty.

Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, argued that men do not choose evil and ugliness for their own sake, but out of a perverted or inordinate desire for happiness and beauty. A rough analogy begins to form in my mind. The ice and the snow are not bad in themselves; indeed, they have both brought me brief moments of happiness today. But throw a man into the mix, and the combination, on this night, could spell disaster.

Perhaps my thoughts distracted me; perhaps there was nothing I could do, but as I advance upon the snow-covered ice, my feet slide out from under me, and I go down — hard. Lying on the ground, winded, I’m surprised that, other than my right elbow, I don’t seem to be in pain. I work my way up to a sitting position and pause before trying to rise.

“Are you OK?” a voice behind me says. “You hit hard. I could hear it inside.” An elderly gentleman is coming down the driveway of the house I just passed. My pride smarting more than my body, I roll to my left and rise. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Would you like me to take you somewhere?” I start to say no. It’s not that much farther; the only thing that hurts is my elbow. Having fallen once, I’ll be more careful. I don’t need your help.

And then, oddly, as I look into his face, lined with worry, the words of the Baltimore Catechism come back to me again: “We must take more care of our soul than of our body.” Quite literally, my pride has gone before my fall.

“Yes, please. I’d appreciate a ride home.” A smile breaks his look of concern: “I’ll go get my keys.”

As I wait on the sidewalk for my newfound friend to return, I remember a passage I had marked this very morning in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, to come back to for further reflection. Discussing “Communion in charity,” the Catechism notes, “In this solidarity with all men, living or dead, which is founded on the communion of saints, the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all” (953).

There was no need for me to fall tonight; my pride brought on the aching that I feel slowly spreading across my back and down my arm. But my pride also prevented the act of charity that my wife would have happily performed in coming to pick me up. And even after my fall, it almost prevented the one that this elderly gentlemen longed to perform.

Too often, we struggle across the black ice of our spiritual life alone, not because others have abandoned us, but because we’re not willing to admit that we need help or to accept it when offered. We may happily perform acts of charity ourselves, but how often do we rebuff the efforts of others, their little acts of charity that would redound to the profit of all — to us, to them, to the entire communion of saints? In doing so, we not only expose ourselves to unnecessary falls, but deprive them — and the entire Body of Christ on earth — of the increase in grace that we all so desperately need.

My family waits at home, and through the kindness of a stranger, I’ll be there in a few minutes, in time to pull out of the oven the slow-roasted pork shoulder that we have prepared for the feast. It is Epiphany, and God has granted me an epiphany, and tonight I will celebrate both.

First published on January 14, 2009, in Inside Catholic (now Crisis Magazine).

I've Got a Secret

Back in November and December, while Republicans across the country were writing letters, calling in to talk radio, and even taking to the streets to protest Al Gore's attempt to steal the election in Florida, their fellow party members in Rockford remained strangely silent. They must have found it disquieting when the Bush campaign kept insisting that machines are more accurate than humans. After all, it's been a staple of local Republican belief for almost 20 years that Rockford Democrats have manipulated computerized counting machines to steal at least three of the last five mayoral elections.

In theory, at least, it's possible. As James J. Condit argued in Chronicles four years ago ("A House Without Doors," Views, November 1996), the same technology that simplifies the process of counting votes also makes it much easier to steal an election. Since computerized counting is conducted at central locations, ballots must be moved, which means there's an opportunity to substitute pre-punched ballots for the ones voters actually used. If that fails, the counting machines' computers can be programmed to return the desired result.

While I have been a poll-watcher during one local election and have observed the vote counting after another, I've seen no evidence that local Democrats have actually tampered with either ballots or counting machines. But I am convinced of the truth of a related conspiracy theory: Most politicians in Rockford are heavily influenced by a small group of public contractors and real-estate developers. Their own campaign-finance disclosure statements on the Illinois Board of Elections website (www.elections.state.il.us) provide plenty of evidence.

But if everyone here in Rockford has heard that the last two mayors have simply been pawns of monied interests (and everyone has), then why have the Democrats won the last five mayoral elections in a city routinely described as Republican? The simple answer could be that local voters just don't care.

There may, however, be more at work here. When most people—in Rockford or elsewhere—hear the word "conspiracy," they think of a cabal aimed at overturning the will of the people. That's certainly the way popular literature, movies, and TV shows portray conspiracies. But if you were trying to gain power (or wealth) in the modern world, why would you set yourself against the people? It's much easier to present yourself as their champion. Give them what they want, and they will return the favor.

Both Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor and the Cigarette-Smoking Man on The X-Files understood this. So, too, did the interests that backed Rockford Democratic mayoral candidate John McNamara in 1981. A blue-collar town heavily dependent on the aerospace industry, Rockford had been hit hard by the recession of the late 70's and early 80's. Unemployment was over 20 percent; factories were closing; new businesses weren't taking up the slack. Rockford was on its way to becoming a ghost town.

Helped along by the Reagan military buildup (which revitalized Rockford's industries), John McNamara gave the people what they wanted—economic recovery—while enriching his benefactors through a series of public-works projects (knocking down Rockford's historic buildings and erecting Soviet-style ones), tax breaks, and zoning changes that encouraged private development. By the time McNamara left office in 1989, Rockford's economy had not only rebounded but added a service sector (read: strip malls and chain restaurants). The public-works contractors and real-estate developers who had supported him were firmly entrenched, and he was able to handpick his successor: our current mayor. Democrat Charles Box. Box has nurtured the city's relationship with McNamara's benefactors, and McNamara himself became president of the parent company of the chief public-works contractor, Rockford Blacktop.

Because many of us don't like the intimate connection between Rockford Blacktop and our city government, we often forget that most people in Winnebago County don't mind as long as the roads that Blacktop builds make it easier for them to drive from the vinyl-sided ranch houses they bought from Gambino Realtors to the strip malls that Sunil Puri's First Rockford Group built. In other words, those who supported John McNamara in 1981 have triumphed—not by working against the people, but by recognizing what they wanted and using that knowledge to gain power and wealth. (If government weren't involved, libertarians would undoubtedly proclaim this a stunning example of the virtues of the free market.)

That doesn't change the fact that a small elite dominates the government of Rockford and Winnebago County for its own enrichment, but it changes the political dynamic. Those of us who recognize what's wrong here in Rockford can't count on setting it right by winning elections—particularly since politicians in both parties realize which side their bread is buttered on. Our next mayoral election (in April) will pit a Democratic state representative with strong ties to the McNamara/Box machine against a Republican businessman who shares a campaign- finance chairman—and several key supporters—with the current Democratic mayor. What's the point of having two parties?

At its root, the degeneration of modern democracy is a cultural problem, not a political one. Once political power is vested in the people, all that stands between oligarchy and freedom is the virtue of the masses. In the 18th and 19th centuries, "popular" revolutions failed because the revolutionaries didn't realize the extent to which the people were still attached to throne and altar. But now, the throne is occupied by the likes of Bill Clinton and the altar is attended by Jesse Jackson, and Americans don't mind. They may say they do; they may even think they do; but their actions speak louder than their words. Bill Clinton could have awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Prince of Lies, and he would still have left office with a 70-percent approval rating. (Come to think of it, he did award the medal to the Reverend Jackson.)

So why do local Republicans continue to believe that the only way Mayors McNamara and Box could have won power was by stealing elections? The trouble is not that they can't see the forest for the trees, but that they mistake one tiny leaf for the whole of human existence. Yes, many who desire power are corrupt; yes, sometimes they break the law to achieve their ends; but often, they don't have to. Why overthrow governments, stuff ballot boxes, or manipulate counting machines when you can achieve your ends simply by saying what the people think they want to hear, while doing what the people actually want done?

At the end of George W. Bush's four or eight years as President, Roe v. Wade will still be the law of the land, more states will have recognized homosexual "marriages," more American businesses will have moved overseas, more women and homosexuals will have joined the military, more Americans will have died while killing innocent civilians in countries we have no business attacking, multiculturalism and bilingualism will have increased their hold on American education (remember, Pater's Department of Education first dreamed up Goals 2000), and immigration—both illegal and legal—will have increased. And here in Rockford, no matter which party wins the next mayoral election, Rockford Blacktop will still pave our streets, Sunil Puri will still level farmland and forests to put up strip malls and vinyl-sided ranches, and "Dr." Richard Ragsdale will still murder babies. Because, in the end, that's what the people want.

History is indeed made by men in a room somewhere; but in the modern era, those men have found that it's easier to control the course of events by adding on to the room and letting more folks inside. Soon—perhaps already—those of us on the outside will be in the minority.

***

Psst. Hey, you—the guy at the keyboard. Your conclusions may he right, hut your theory's all wrong. Wanna know the truth about the presidential election? It was all rigged from the beginning—has been, in fact, since at least 1988. That's why George Senior was so smug in those early primaries, and Bob Dole was so frustrated. He knew he couldn't win; wasn't supposed to. And 1992? Give me a break. No sitting president could run such a bad campaign unless he were trying to throw the election. 

You see, it was all a setup. The Skull and Bones know that the American people are a bunch of suckers who can't get past the appearance of a two-party system. What better way to hide the fact that they're pulling the strings than to remove the pachyderm puppet from the stage once in a while, and replace him with a jackass marionette? Clinton's not a Bonesman, but he is Yale Law, so he knows the score. This year, however, it was time to bring the presidency back home. So they crowned Dubya almost a year before the first primary and forced the only man who represented a threat out of the GOP and into a dead-end third party. The stage was set: They knew Al Gore would play along—after all, he'd picked a graduate of Yale and Yale Law as his running mate. (Surely you didn't think Bill Buckley took such a shine to Joe Lieberman because of his religious values?) 

But then the Boners made a mistake: They thought it would be fun to have a real horse race, but they cut it too close in Florida. Tired of playing second fiddle to his father, to Clinton, to Tipper, to Joe, and now to some smug son of a Bonesman—Al grabbed the bow and started calling the dance. But he forgot one thing: Clarence Thomas. Yale Law. (You didn't think George Senior nominated him just because of his race, did you?) The poor sap didn't have a chance. 

Funny thing is, it all worked out better for the Bonesmen this way. Al couldn't let the American people know just what he was fighting against—most of them would have thought he was nuts. And now, all those conspiracy theorists who used to think that Skull and Bones or the CFR or the Trilateral Commission or the Rockefellers or the Bilderbergers might be calling the shots have fallen right into line. After all, the Democrats tried to steal the election, and the Republicans would never do that, right? Next time, the Bonesmen may not even need to swap marionettes. 

Anyway, that's the real reason those Republicans in Rockford were so quiet during the Florida recount: THEY KNEW

Pass it on. 

First published in the March 2001 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.