American Governance: Limited, Constrained, and Yoked

Posted on September 21, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Is there any greater false manichean choice than the idea that liberty and virtue are in opposition and that the government can not push one except at the expense of the other… or indeed that government is the proper vehicle to push either?

     Far too many people, as of late, believe that materialism and prosperity is destroying the spiritual good and that the economy has become a god unto itself that the country (through the state, of course) worships, and that the only alternative is for the government to subsume the economy into a tool to work for the country, as guided by an enlightened state of course, and towards some virtuous society as determined by the enlightened few who run the government.

     This is, as it always has been, a false dilemma fallacy. The “market” is just the free interaction of free individuals, and these people can not brook people who exercise their freedom contrary to their idea of how things ought to be, which is dishonestly packaged as the “common good”.

     The proper role of American governance is a constrained one, and limited by our unique heritage and culture going back to the better part of a millennium. The Mangna Carta and the Charter of the Forest made it clear that there were fundamental rights that not even the state could trample upon—the state must be yoked lest it yoke the people. It is that history and heritage which confines the state to limited to the confines of fundamental precepts, and enshrined in the Constitution as a paragon of that wisdom. As Edmund Burke noted:

     Is that constraining of the state to acting within the substance and fundamentals of America’s heritage, and the liberties that protects, that serve as the glue that we hold individually in common that makes America, America. It is not a “shared good” provided from some societal collective, and certainly not something the state can be trusted to judge as desirable or not. It must come organically from the people themselves, and while the state will reflect that, empowering it to specific social ends is destructive of any “good”.

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News of the Week (September 20th, 2026)

Posted on September 20, 2026 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for September 20th, 2026


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Firing Line Friday: Civil Rights and Foreign Policy

Posted on September 18, 2026 by The Political Hat

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     Sixty years ago, the question of how America’s foreign policy was primarily about combating Communism. The question of America’s impact on the rights of the people affected by that is certainly a cromulent one, but could such concerns go so far as to become tools of America’s enemies?   William F. Buckley, Jr. debated Floyd B. McKissick on just such a concern over civil rights and foreign policy.

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Happy Constitution Day!

Posted on September 17, 2026 by The Political Hat

     The Constitution of the United States of America is one of the crowning achievements of mankind. It was a distillation of the Anglo-American tradition and heritage set as the Law of the Land and sets the rules above the rulers. Unlike the rest of the Anglosphere, it supersedes mere parliamentary or legislative whim to serve as a lodestone that has endured from the 18th century through today. As the Sharon Statement so eloquently put it: “That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power”.

     Even though it has and in many ways continues to be bent, twisted, or even outright violated from time to time, it serves as beacon to to return to that rises above the honeyed words of politicians, and though abused, has warded off the fundamental transformation that has wrecked havoc not only through the Anglosphere, but through the Western world more broadly.

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Quick Takes – Madness In The Anglosphere: Censoring Parliamentary Hearings in Australia; Free Speech A Weapon Of War In New Zealand; Nurses Refusing To Treat Racists In The U.K.

Posted on September 17, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: America went right where the rest went wrong.

     First, a little advertisement from New Zealand:

     Carrying on…

     The regulators can’t let their own parliament let the people know what’s going on.

“Just when you thought Australia’s steamrolling toward censorship couldn’t get any worse, the heads of Australian government departments want new limits on how members of parliament share recordings of officials testifying at public parliamentary hearings.

“A new attempt to this end was made last week by the Secretaries Board, made up of the heads of Australia’s government departments. The board is currently chaired by Steven Kennedy, secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which advises the prime minister and coordinates policy across the government.

“The proposal was contained in a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Parliamentary Standards.

“The board is unhappy that politicians are using excerpts of the footage from these hearings, often to criticize the officials, and sometimes to ridicule them, by editing the clips and adding captions to highlight certain parts of the testimony.”

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The Non-Neutrality Myth

Posted on September 16, 2026 by The Political Hat

     It Has become fashionable amongt the so-called “Common Good Conservatives” to treat virtue and liberty as a zero-sum game where too much liberty destroys virtue and that if virtue (but according to who) must be paramount for a dispensation of “liberty” to be allowed. This false dilemma fallacy, complete with a “strawman of liberty”, so as to speak, is part and parcel of the misleading and fundamentally dishonest begging of the “common good” question:

“The ‘common good’ quarrel on the Right hinges on a single question: does government exist chiefly to secure liberty, or to serve the common good? Put differently: are political communities meant to erect as few guardrails as possible so diverse peoples can actualize their choices? Or is the point of societies to embody a particular conception of the good life? And should, or how could, the government deploy its power to ensure those ends? Perhaps the ‘general Welfare,’ as the expressed purpose of government named in our Constitution, deserves more of our attention — even if we ask legitimate questions about the scope of its reach in achieving it.”

     Yup, the very phrasing of the question is ripe with presumptions and intended to beg the question to leas to the preferred outcome. The first rule of such debates is to not concede the loaded question, and it’s as loaded as a fully chambered revolver used to play this little game of Russian Roulette.

     Rather than play that game, let us posit a more honest question: Does government serve as a restrained and limited tool to maintain laws that rise above the rulers that are conducive towards both liberty and virtue; or is government simply the means by which some collective society with a collective will, as divined by an enlightened few, determine the “good life” that people have been ordered into living?

     Indeed it is quintessentially American, and our long heritage before our founding tracing back to the tossing off of the “Norman Yoke” with the recognition of a separation of society and state, for our government to be limited in power and scope, tasked with maintaining the minimal amount of powers and laws that are conducive towards people ordering themselves via the blessing of liberty into what has become the greatest country on Earth. The question of the scope of that limited government, and the particulars thereof, is a very different thing from that scope being unlimited.

     Societies are not constructed and morality can not be imposed, as the myriad socialist societies that have destroyed Europoe, and beyond, have aptly demonstrated. Nor is the “General Welfare” a grant beyond the Leftism even the Supreme Court foolishly allowed in South Dakota v. Dole (1987) and United States v. Butler (1936).

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The Debate On The Right: Is America Fundamentally Good?

Posted on September 15, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Would America still be America is what Americans have in common ceased to be common and were replace with something fundamentally different. The question and implication of that commonality or lack thereof is discussed below, quoted in full below due to the limitations of Twitter’s/X’s embeds.

This is an interesting insight into politics in general, but also the schism that now exists in right-wing social media between conservatism and postliberalism…and the reason there is such a conservative backlash against JD Vance

This post basically says that while The West Wing was unabashedly liberal, the show still portrayed certain shared values that no long exists today and which conservatives also long for:

“America is fundamentally good.
Public service can be honorable.
Competence matters.
Patriotism belongs to everyone.”

Many of us older conservatives remember that this was normal not that long ago, and that most people still want that version of America because we’re tired of all the outrage, all the time nature of politics. We recognize that social media is not real life and that the culture wars don’t define our day to day existence. Still, we feel it’s worth fighting because values still matter and if we lose the culture then the country will eventually slip towards something worse…but not imminently

The post-liberals seem to believe THAT America is gone. Many are younger and don’t remember what normal was, and why it was better. They think the world is what they see on social media, rather than anecdotal evidence of the worst that exists on both sides. To them it’s a 5 alarm fire, so they view politics as an existential struggle for power. They are good and virtuous and must defeat the evil on the other side. Things like the Constitution, values and precedents are for “losers”

But that’s not reality.   I will be the first to admit that liberalism has flaws which make it vulnerable to things like influx of immigrants who don’t share our values.

What conservatives wanted when we put our support behind Trump was that we need to make changes because liberalism has vulnerabilities that threaten Western Civilization…but that these changes need to come within the confines of our existing system of a Constitutional Republic (not a Democracy) built on an underlying system of liberalism. In other words, let’s improve the system because it’s a system worth preserving

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“We’re All Socialists Now” — Rise Of The True Uniparty

Posted on September 14, 2026 by The Political Hat

     One of the many refrains of the nouveau (purported) “Right” is that the conservative movement and/or GOP were the “surrender caucus” who pretended to opposed the march of the Left, but then happily joined in when it became a fait accompli. Ironic, then, that those nay-sayers are by and large embracing the socialism and welfare state of the Left. Such is the case with the desire to turn poor married couples with children into a new welfare class, dependent on the “Right”-lead government for their largess.

     To these people, an all powerful welfare state that empowers the government to shape society according to the dictates of the enlightened elite was not the problem, only that they weren’t the elite who get to mould society according to their ideal. They have fully accepted that socialism is here, but that it ceases to be socialism under their leadership and their vision of society-to-be.

     As Ronald Reagan would say, this isn’t a choice—it’s an echo.

     The mistake mad is the assumption that government must be a tool to impose someone’s idea of morality and what is the “common good”, and if you don’t impose it on others, then others will impose it on you.

     Limited government exists to restrain this false dilemma fallacy.

     The only “choice” is what cog in which machine they’d prefer to submit to.   Either which way, Leviathan calls.   That society and the economy should be moulded to some fantasy “common good”, “justice”, or some other trite slogan is considered a given, with only the specific superficial form in question.   But when it comes to promising free stuff and an uplifted society, it’s Johnny-come-lately vs. the entrenched faction. Or, to put it another way, it’s the “Diet Coke of socialism”. Slapping on a superfiscially moral paintjob doesn’t change the collapsing wreck beneath.

     The two are no more on different ends of a spectrum than a horseshoe bent to the point of making a circle. It is the same type of difference between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Hitlerites and Strasserite, or the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea.

     To double down on the socialism, President Trump has promised “dividends” of $5000 be paid to Americans from a source that doesn’t involve the taxpayers (perhaps in the form of Monopoly Money).

     In both cases, fallacious assumptions are made, including: Individuals can not rule themselves, but some who are “more equal” can rule the rest; society can be remade/fixed/transformed into a permanent good by imposing the desired outer form; that imposing the preferred superficiality will transform the people according to the fantasy of the imposers; that such transformed people will become what the Soviet’s called “The New Soviet Man”; and that empowering government without limit, fetters, or the restraints that comprise our American heritage can not and will not backfire or empower their enemies.

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News of the Week (September 13th, 2026)

Posted on September 13, 2026 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for September 13th, 2026


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A Quarter Century Ago Today – NEVER FORGET

Posted on September 11, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Twenty-five years ago today, America was attacked. Instead of focusing in on the political and legal shenanigans going on in politics, let us focus who never would have the luxury of political circuses.  Never forget the victims who died, and those who fought back.

     In Pace, Requiescat.

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