The image conservative foreign policy academic Robert Kagan creates in his novel guide, Rebellion, is dark and foreboding. According to him, a conflict between democracy and anti-liberalism has “been fought within the British system since the time of the Revolution.” And then things are starting to get worse. Although the present issue” seems extraordinary, the challenge that is tearing the country aside now is as old as the republic”. No matter who wins the next election,” the American liberal political and social order will fracture, perhaps irrecoverably” . ,
In Rebellion, Kagan attempts to define and explain the danger it poses to the American manner.  ,
The” sole function” of the founders ‘ liberalism, in Kagan’s opinion, was to defend some fundamental rights of all people against the state and the wider community. Once the colonies decided to declare self-reliance, they jettisoned the English law and adopted John Locke’s suggestions of “natural right” and the” interpersonal compact”. They created what Kagan refers to as” a rights-protection equipment” and called it a “rights-recognition machine” as well because the owners anticipated that more people would eventually like these rights.
In his watch, this was a radical departure from all preceding forms of government. He claims that” America’s progressive Revolution was not the natural extension of’ Western ‘ society, the European Enlightenment, or even the American law”. Nor was it a “product of an Anglo- Christian development. Its roots are not to be found in Christianity”, either. And the profound disconnect between the democratic rebellion and the people who led it created a hostile reaction.
Kagan has a more precise definition of democracy than anti-liberalism. The” southern South” served as anti-liberalism’s” crystal and beating soul,” which changed to” the liberal antiliberal white Christian causes in the Republican Party” after World War II. To Kagan,” the American conservatives ‘ preoccupation on’ little government ‘ was intrinsically tied up, second, with the protection of slavery, and finally, after the Civil War, with the South’s efforts to preserve light supremacy”. But, anti- democracy manifests as belief in little government, light supremacy, opposition to immigration, and allowing religion to have a important role in public life.
A closer look reveals that, in American history, liberalism and anti- liberalism are heavily intermixed. For instance, Kagan asserts that advocates of small government typically have nefarious ulterior motives, but that big government supporters frequently do the same. The majority of Southerners were content to tamper with the Fugitive Slave Act and other states ‘ rights to defend slavery. Southern Whigs, like the Louisiana sugar barons, were prone to be the most vicious slave thieves, the most ardent oligarchs, and the biggest supporters of federal infrastructure projects: they had no objection to expanding it in the same way. The Confederate bureaucracy was much more overbearing than the American government thanks to Alexander Stephens and his fellow ex-Wigs. The Northern Whigs were more vocal about their dislike of Catholic immigrants than slavery, and they shared the Southern Whigs ‘ horror for Andrew Jackson. The line between liberalism and anti-liberalism rarely runs between Americans, but it does cross every American heart, according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  ,
In addition, the movements that have made the most progress toward liberalism frequently did so for reasons other than those listed by Kagan. For most of American history, freedom movements have drawn heavily from the Bible for inspiration. The prohibition on man-stealing and other biblical texts were used by northern and English evangelicals to support the abolishment of slavery. The Rev. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference , was one of the most effective advocacy organizations of the Civil Rights Movement. Thomas Jefferson, who allied with Baptists, who opposed state churches and sought to advance religious freedom rather than to make the government secular, had a greater influence on American life than true secularists like Thomas Paine.  ,
Ironically, the closest the United States came to anti- liberal governance was under Woodrow Wilson, whom Kagan describes as a “progressive liberal reforming” president. Wilson was extremely racist, even for his time, and he hated black people and immigrants in equal measure. His reliance on urban machines led to a moderated Democratic distaste for immigrants running, but his progressivism stifled his opposition to black racism because eugenic theories of scientific racism had gathered at the time. Like his Southern Whig heroes, Wilson wanted unelected bureaucrats to dominate the government. In the landmark” The Study of Administration”, he wrote,” What, then, is there to prevent? Well, principally, popular sovereignty”. His fellow progressives believed bureaucracies would enable the ignorant masses to have a better future, so as they saw it, purging the government of undesirable ethnic and racial minorities, where necessary, was just good government.  ,
However, many of Wilson’s excesses were reversed and rallied against him. Warren Harding was a disappointing president, but he made good on his “return to normalcy” campaign pledge, as did his successor, Calvin Coolidge. Kagan describes the election of 1920 as” an unprecedented attack against liberalism and progressivism in all their forms,” but Wilson cites both the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the 1924 Immigration Act as examples. The Republicans did pass immigration restrictions, but even Franklin D. Roosevelt endorsed such measures. And when the Democrats nearly let white supremacists who championed Wilson’s son- in- law overrun their 1924 convention, nicknamed the” Klanbake”, they lost the subsequent election.  ,
In this context, Rebellion suggests that the current situation may not seem as dire as it might seem. Kagan fears that the country will be led in a dark direction by former president Donald Trump because he believes that the various anti-liberal groups he criticizes, including originalists and Christian nationalists.  ,
But, for one thing, Kagan’s opponents are much less coherent than he fears. Kagan laments the controversy surrounding COVID- 19 lockdowns and vaccines, noting that” Trump’s supporters never criticize him or tolerate criticism of him. However, Trump’s own supporters have booed him at rallies because he discussed Operation Warp Speed, one of his presidency’s best initiatives, in public. Trump has kept his hold on the public imagination largely because he pays attention to and responds to his followers: After Warp Speed drew boos, he stopped talking about it.
Even if Kagan were accurate about the people’s motivations, American history shows a clear path forward that avoids the country’s collapse: to prioritize some issues and draw voters. Abraham Lincoln’s Republicans picked up the remnants of the anti- immigrant” Know Nothing” party to win in 1860. White supremacists and Franklin D. Roosevelt helped Rexford Tugwell and Hugh Johnson secure his New Deal through alliance. Surely, if the threat to the country was so great, Democrats could break off parts of Trump’s coalition, who are not nearly as bad as many of the New Dealers, to save the republic. However, President Joe Biden and his reelection campaign seem unwilling to do that, even picking up the Latino and black voters who voted for Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2020.
Fortunately, there is another bulwark, though it is one that Kagan deplores: the originalists. They attempt to interpret the Constitution in accordance with what the founders believed it to mean, which Kagan calls anti-liberal despite his assertion that the founders were liberal. He worries that “even the Republican-dominated Supreme Court” cannot be relied on to “assess independent authority” if they must oppose Trump. However, originalist justices have already issued rulings on Trump’s Supreme Court numerous times. There is no reason to believe that the originalists will abandon their project for any one politician because they have done it for decades across all kinds of presidencies.
Rebellion is a work of synthesis, and it suffers from the academy’s near- total ignorance of American religion and the South. But it is bracingly argued and thought- provoking throughout. Where it is incorrect, it serves as a record of how the concerns of one historical moment can make us notice and overlook important aspects of earlier times in a way that makes the present seem more special and troubling than it is. In reality, the present usually seems special because it is, well, present. Academicians will write favorably of Trump if, perhaps a century from now, the stronger forces that will ultimately shape American history do so. They, too, will have missed the mark.
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Mike Watson serves as the Center for the Future of Liberal Society at the Hudson Institute.
