Podnotes AI summary: If you read one book on the U.S. Secret Service, make it 2021’s Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.
The book paints a grim picture of an underfunded, outdated Secret Service relying on luck rather than competence. Morale is at rock bottom due to rigid management that fosters resentment and self-serving leaders neglecting necessary reforms despite a $2 billion budget.
From elite protectors post-JFK assassination to now being plagued by infighting and obsolescence, the service has faced three years as the least favored federal workplace. The narrative suggests leadership failures have compromised security at Trump events; requests for additional resources were often denied, leading up to an attempted shooting.
The author criticizes structural flaws like compartmentalized responsibilities within protective details and inadequate advance work in security planning. He also discusses gender dynamics within the force, arguing all-male teams might offer more cohesion without distractions or tension from mixed-gender interactions.
Trump himself strained resources during his presidency—his extensive travel increased costs significantly while he neglected systemic issues within the Secret Service. His administration provided minimal funding increases and failed to prioritize long-term health over immediate personal benefits.
Why weren’t Secret Service agents defending a woman’s First Amendment rights during Trump’s speech? Their duty isn’t to protect speech but the president. They’re trained to carry out this task efficiently, and it’s not about discrimination—it’s about adhering to their roles.
In recent years, though, there’s been confusion over minority rights versus majority rule in democracy. Some argue that discrimination can be necessary when hiring for specific job requirements—excluding factors like race or sexual orientation—but based on what the job demands.
During an analysis of a Trump rally incident, several points were discussed: lack of coordination between local police and Secret Service due to manpower issues; the shooter learning about the rally days before; and media critiques of social media disinformation following the assassination attempt.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump led to national unity calls clashing with finger-pointing over inflammatory rhetoric. In his recovery from a near-fatal wound, Trump displayed resilience by continuing his campaign despite challenges within his party and criticisms from Democrats seeking Biden’s presidency.
Security details are crucial in protecting high-profile figures like former presidents. Protective intelligence involves assessing potential threats well ahead of scheduled events. However, cultural shifts toward diversity hiring may impact effectiveness if they don’t prioritize excellence above all else.
At one event where Trump was speaking, breakdowns in communication and insufficient training resulted in slow evacuation procedures after shots were fired. It highlighted systemic issues within law enforcement culture—a descent into mediocrity rather than striving for excellence through rigorous standards and adequate funding.
In a video, smoke appears after a bullet grazes Donald Trump. Crooks fires two rounds that miss Trump but hit David Dutch, who falls to the ground. A second volley from Crooks misses its mark, striking Corey Comperatore in the head and James Copenhagen H., both reacting with shock.
The footage also disproves the theory of a shooter on the water tower and shows no one was there during the incident. Analysis reveals shots at Trump were consistent with Crook’s known location; counter-sniper shots ended his second attack, preventing further harm.
A detailed trajectory analysis matches the bullets’ paths to their targets based on stage heights and distances. Audio analysis is dismissed as flawed due to moving microphones. Conspiracy theories about secondary shooters are debunked by impact locations near Trump.
Whistleblowers allege President Trump received inadequate protection at a Pennsylvania rally due to inexperienced personnel assigned by DHS instead of Secret Service agents. Senator Josh Hawley has been informed of security lapses such as lack of canine units and improper access control around podiums.
Commentary suggests Director Jill Biden may have influenced hiring decisions within Secret Service based on diversity rather than competence—a point criticized for potentially lowering standards within critical roles like law enforcement or military operations.
An interview with an off-screen Secret Service sniper questions whether leadership prioritizes political activism over merit-based appointments following an embarrassing failure in presidential protection detail execution.
My sleep is affected. I’m a bit jittery and upset.
Luke: I reject all the conspiracy theories about the shooting of Donald Trump except that I am open to the Biden administration deliberately providing inadequate and incompetent security to Trump to maximize his chance of getting assassinated. Perhaps it wasn’t just incompetence by the Biden administration, perhaps somebody was malicious.
The Secret Service was warned days before they couldn’t secure the building—a known potential threat. Local PD claims their warning email went unanswered. With limited manpower, we couldn’t cover all areas, including the AGR building’s exterior and roof, says Butler Township manager Tom Knight.
Leadership matters in law enforcement to foster excellence—an extraordinary culture of accountability and punctuality. However, if we shift towards a more inclusive approach that may seem less masculine or traditional, some fear it could compromise this level of excellence.
An hour before Trump’s speech, Crooks was spotted by Secret Service as suspicious; he had a range finder gauging the distance to Trump’s podium. Despite clear signs of danger—like on 9/11 when New York agencies couldn’t communicate due to different radio frequencies—the response was flawed.
The Secret Service has low morale and job satisfaction under leaders appointed by several presidents—not just Trump or Biden—who haven’t upheld standards of excellence.
Trump’s demands strained resources; his family members even dated agents without repercussions. His administration denied Biden full security after the election win—raising fears within Biden’s camp about the Secret Service’s loyalty.
A shooter got into position despite being noticed earlier with suspicious items like a duffel bag and range finder—and even while climbing onto roofs at the event site where thousands were present. This failure highlights systemic issues within an already stretched-thin agency resistant to taking responsibility for its shortcomings.
Questions arise: How did Crooks know about this vantage point? Was there inside information? The situation suggests deeper problems requiring congressional attention perhaps influenced by political biases against Trump—even from elected officials who should be impartial.
Diversity efforts are scrutinized—height disparities among agents protecting taller individuals like Trump raise operational concerns about physical capabilities versus inclusivity goals.
Ultimately, reform seems unlikely unless driven by tragedy—a sad reflection on our readiness to address glaring security flaws head-on only after disaster strikes.
Reports indicate that police were inside the building during a shooting incident but not on the roof, raising questions about their response. A sniper team may have faced difficulties positioning themselves due to the angle of the roof and possibly couldn’t see the shooter initially. Conversations with former law enforcement officials suggest that counter-snipers don’t need permission to engage a threat like this.
Contrary to some circulating rumors, there was no hesitation based on needing authority; if an opportunity presented itself, they would act. However, it seems another team, not previously thought responsible in media reports, neutralized the gunman.
Conservative values place higher importance on concepts such as honor, especially within military and law enforcement.
The case of Sergeant Bergdahl and Barack Obama’s controversial exchange for prisoners highlighted these differences in perspective—the administration’s actions seen by some as dismissive of military virtue and honor.
Ronnie Goldman’s book on conservative cultural oppression references elites in higher education as opposition to traditional values. Alvin Gardner’s seminal work from 1979 claims universities are battlegrounds for class struggles. Education today focuses not just on learning but fitting into its system with diversity and inclusion statements serving as filters for conformity.
Admission to elite universities signals intellectual merit and aligns with their liberal image. Academic excellence is partly subjective; it’s shaped by liberal elites who use institutions to exclude conservatives and secure their dominance, starting in academia then spreading through social ostracism.
Elite universities have replaced old WASP virtues of utility and honor with intellectual prowess. Critics argue this masks new forms of social virtue that ignore individual perspectives under the guise of equality while marginalizing conservative views.
Our nation is filled with educated yet ignorant individuals groomed to uphold liberal ideals. The media delayed calling an incident an assassination attempt due to protocol instead of common sense which would’ve identified it immediately like recognizing Joe Biden’s cognitive issues during debates.
Elite university culture requires detachment from tradition fostering a hierarchy between those who adopt this disengaged stance versus those rooted in conventional beliefs or emotions—creating a divide over moral standards like attitudes towards homosexuality or single motherhood.
Conservatives believe liberals’ push for equality threatens their existence since they feel oppressed by these dominant ideologies that prioritize intellectualism over traditional values which often go unrecognized or dismissed by academic elites despite being obvious issues such as Biden’s public cognitive decline.
Security failures at events highlight resource limitations within organizations like the Secret Service, prompting discussions about departmental restructuring for effectiveness amidst crises beyond immigration concerns—highlighting leadership responsibilities at Homeland Security levels.
Books on Biden’s administration often overlook his evident cognitive decline focusing instead on policy impacts ignoring significant governance aspects leading academics also disregard any negative assessments favoring positive portrayals aligned against Trump-centric narratives reinforcing establishment biases against factual inconsistencies or differing opinions seen as threats needing censorship rather than open discussion points—all stemming from a deep-seated need to maintain power structures even if it involves creating false realities around political figures like Biden whose public appearances cause unease yet are minimized within constructed narratives aimed at preserving authority regardless of truth distortions necessary for defeating political adversaries like Trump signifying ultimate loyalty lies not in objective analysis but strategic preservation tactics guided by partisan objectives above all else.
Truth had become the enemy, something to avoid. People thought they could protect their world by creating a real Joe Biden. The debate on June 27 was more important than it seemed. While Biden spoke, those listening closely heard a sound like fabric tearing as fantasies crumbled and Americans saw the struggles of a man with declining health.
The shock lingered not because it was surprising but predictable. We watched the collapse of a grand deception and possibly the end of Biden’s political life. He might need outside help to accept this reality.
The media that once supported him now seeks to reveal his weaknesses while maintaining its main goal: opposing Donald Trump. As Biden falls behind Trump, he loses crucial support from outlets like The New York Times—a blow no Democrat can withstand.
What happens next is unclear; if the establishment doesn’t survive this revelation, personal ambitions may tear apart what unity remains in the Democratic Party.
I don’t pity Joe Biden; he deceived America and got caught. If forced out of politics, that will define his legacy—if Trump wins again in 2024, elites will despise Biden for failing them so completely.
In terms of security concerns at events—there are discrepancies reported about where threats are located and how they’re handled. Some suggest police hesitation due to anti-force sentiment may be influencing response times during critical moments.
Elliott Blatt joins the show: “So this [Trump shooting] story has really captivated you. Why does Luke just walk into the fire? I realized why Luke is Luke, what the essence of Luke Ford is. Luke is comfortable with the uncomfortable. And that’s why he streams. He’s willing to discuss uncomfortable topics. What has Luke talked about? Everything we like to bury, racism, sexism, pornography, sex. So have you always been this way?”
Luke: “Probably. There are times when I have tamped down my desire to discuss uncomfortable topics to preserve my social standing.”
Elliott: “But you keep being drawn back into the fire. So you suppress this urge to be socially connected. You have to disguise who you are.”
Luke: “Or it doesn’t have to come out. There are times where it’s inappropriate to bring out the uncomfortable. And there are times that I don’t wan to talk about the uncomfortable. So it’s not so much disguise, it’s more about knowing the time and place. It’s much more appropriate for me to do it on a live stream than to introduce it into a conversation where it’s not wanted.”
Elliott: “And that’s why you stream because you need that outlet because it’s just so much a part of your identity. This is the your art form, and you need to express it.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been with the group of women. Right? And then some controversial topic shows up in the conversation. And what they immediately do is they start looking around the room and monitoring the facial expressions of other women before they know whether or not to agree or disagree. Right? And then if the answer is yes, everyone’s enthusiastically, yes. If the answer is no, everyone’s enthusiastically no.”
Qualifications should trump all else when hiring for protective services or any job—not gender quotas or other criteria that overlook more capable candidates for diversity’s sake.
People often exaggerate their involvement in significant events as part of human nature—to feel connected or important—even when it leads to conspiracy theories or false witness accounts.
Those who acknowledge their lackluster lives often console themselves by believing they see through society’s lies better than others who seem successful yet naive.
It’s rare to find someone whose awakening leads to wealth rather than social isolation—often accompanied by extreme views disconnected from societal norms.
Finally, people sometimes misrepresent themselves trying to impress others—an offhand comment can destroy potential connections when one party takes offense at perceived shared values gone awry.
In 2016, Trump wanted to keep his private security led by Keith Schiller, but the Secret Service disliked this. Articles criticized Trump’s decision as risky. Now, it seems he should have kept that team for loyalty and effectiveness.
Trump’s use of Secret Service was controversial; he even denied proper security to Biden when in power. This could lead to a “turnabout is fair play” situation with Biden’s team.
People often try to apply Dennis Prager’s advice on communication and relationships, but it can backfire. It did for me.
One agent lost control of her gun during an incident involving Trump – a stark example of operational challenges.
Stephen J. James joins the show: “This line that people are taking, which is, I’m not saying that women can’t do the job. This frustrates me. I think that this just feeds feeds the problem even more. Yes, you can have some ladies doing regular Secret Service jobs but not the close protection team. I just don’t buy it.
“There’s no boxing regulator in in the world who would sanction a fight between a man and a woman of the same weight. So who are we kidding with this close protection that walks with Trump, wherever he goes, who are responsible for him on the podium, who responsible for him as his walking him amongst crowds. This team who has to disarm people.
In most circumstances, it’s probably going to be physical disarm and grabbing them by by the throat or taking them to the ground. This should be big, strong men.
Luke: “Yes. Without a doubt, but the reason that we are so free to state this obvious truth is that we have nothing to lose. We’re not going to give up our prestigious positions. We’re not gonna give up wealth and honor. We’re not gonna give up beautiful, sexual relationships by stating the obvious truth. Everyone that I played on the show who has a more convoluted approach, they have more to lose than we do. One virtue of our lack of success in life is that we can be free to say the plain truth.
Stephen: “I get the point. It just really frustrate strikes me as I hear them attempting to give this truth that it has to be somebody competent and but yet they’re still walking the fence line.
“The other thing I wanted to mention, Luke, I didn’t tell you actually the whole truth when I spoke to you before in the immediate aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt because I told you I was watching it live. I had it paused in a tab. My instinct was to lie and say that I had been watching it live. I don’t know why. I wanted to to be a part of it.
“This is where many conspiracy theories develop from – these false witness accounts of people who are just want to be part of the moment.”
Luke: “It’s a giveaway when you encounter someone who exaggerates their own significance. You’re dealing with a fragile person who finds the reality of his own significance unbearable and therefore is trying to create a scaffold of significance where there is no viable foundation for that significance. Somebody earning a million dollars a year has no need to make up a story of his own significance. Someone who is a professional athlete, someone who’s having sex regularly with a gorgeous woman, someone who has an esteemed position in his community has much less need to create a false sense of significance because they have a real significance. But those of us who don’t have that real significance that comes with being a star, we much more keenly feel that need to create a significance because the unbearable nature of our own lack of significance is just so painful.”
Stephen: “Whilst being part of the story and I had to pull myself back at the last mode. And you can claim people have now been reporting on it in the aftermath, and each of them are wanting to give, like their own, like like, it’s super insightful thing on it. And so this is even now breeding. Many of these commenting on the shooting are just very excited about it and wanted to get the next angle and we live in the age of, like, engagement and impressions on Twitter and on social media. And so I don’t think that there’s this thing about whether these are really bad lies? Do these people believe them or not?”
Luke: “From age 14 to 22. I exaggerated my sexual prowess. I wasn’t having any sex. Finally at age 22, I started having regular sex. A few weeks in, my girlfriend said, I feel so insecure because you’ve been with so many girls before me. And I said, I was lying. You you’re my first.”
Stephen: “And how did she take that?”
Luke: “She found it adorable. In eighth grade, I had a classmate who was already having sexual interactions with high school goals. He didn’t need to exaggerate his sexual prowess because he was having the real thing. So people who have the real thing, they just have much less of a need to exaggerate their own accomplishments.”
“A few years ago, I interviewed Andy Nowicki about his Covid novel. The interview didn’t go so well. Afterwards, I was struck that for people who are losing at life, they have to comfort themselves and one way they do that is say to themselves, well, at least I see through the bullshit.
“They’re failing at life, but at least they see through the bullshit while their peers who may be less intelligent than them, but who have marriages, children, mortgages, careers, these guys are just careerists. They don’t have the strength that I have to see through the bullshit.
“I jnoticed in myself this constant need to manufacture an angle by which I am an awesome man.
Stephen: “When you get into dissident politics and you start getting red pilled, you do pat yourself on the back as a truth discover, and you spend all of your spare time doing it, but you’re not building the most successful life. We come up with derogatory terms such as normie for people who build a life and follow the rules. We say we’re not like them because they are closed minded. We figured it all out.”
Luke: “My friends with PhDs want to convince the world that their specialty is the key to life. They want to manufacture jobs and prestige for themselves. They’re eager to promote an expansive definition of mental illness so that they can have more clients and power and prestige.
“Even Joe Biden, president of the United States, he is burning with anger that Barack Obama told him to not run for president in 2016 and to allow Hillary Clinton to run instead. So he’s burning with anger and resentment about that. So he’s not gonna listen to the Biden team about how he should drop out now.”
“Donald Trump to a ludicrous extent takes things personally.”
Kip called in discussing performance anxiety with women and how our subconscious might sabotage connections that don’t fit our internal standards. He also shared his discomfort speaking to large groups despite being skilled at persuasion.
Kip believes America is nearing its end due to financial instability rather than conflict with Russia. He worries about the devaluation of currency and suggests billionaires are preparing for crisis scenarios.
Despite Kip’s isolation, he values truth and engages in discussions like these for intellectual fulfillment rather than socializing locally where people may not understand or appreciate deeper conversations about society’s issues.
Finally, I predicted July 2 that Joe Biden would step down based on situational analysis overruling legal precedent – showing how context can overpower established rules or expectations in politics.
Following the law can sometimes feel like a suicidal choice, as some view President Joe Biden’s leadership. Critics argue that his cognitive abilities are declining and speculate he may resign. America prides itself on individualism, which means there’s often more negotiation in daily life than elsewhere.
We all seek validation for our personal narratives; without it, we’re lost. For example, if I couldn’t find support from other Orthodox Jews, maintaining my identity would be difficult. Similarly, political figures like Joe Biden rely on widespread backing to sustain their positions.
The recent shift in political support indicates that President Biden might not run for re-election due to dwindling donations and party support post-debate performance. Some colleagues who have worked with him for years now oppose him—a harsh reality check.
Discussions about whether Biden is fit to finish his term arise alongside debates about potential Democratic nominees if he steps down. There’s speculation of an open convention if Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t seen as a strong candidate against Donald Trump.
On the Republican side, calls for resignation are emerging based on fitness concerns. Meanwhile, Democrats worry about protecting seats in both houses of Congress amid these changes and potentially facing a return of Trump to power.
In this turbulent time in politics, strategies revolve around being a check against opposing parties while navigating vulnerable areas such as border issues attributed to Harris’s management—or lack thereof—as borders czar.
As the political landscape shifts rapidly with these developments unfolding live on news broadcasts across the nation—Fox News included—the focus sharpens not just on presidential races but also on how they influence congressional balances of power and vice-presidential selections going forward.
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When the shots rang out last Saturday, at least two of the female agents around Trump ducked for cover, while the male security stood up. One female agent, the fat one, hid behind Trump. When I try to search for a picture of this, Google won’t present me with one. I had to go to X and then the image came up immediately:
Google seems to be suppressing damaging photos of female agent incompetence. If you put in “female agents ducking during Trump shooting” or similar searches, you won’t find any relevant image results in the first 100 pictures.
The New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories about right-wing complaints regarding Trump’s female agents, but none of the stories presented the damning examples of the ineptitude.
Right-wing influencers use Trump assassination attempt to attack DEI
Diversity and inclusion efforts have become a popular target for conservatives online.
Within hours of the shooting at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, right-wing media pundits and conservative influencers coalesced around an unfounded narrative on social media: the reason Donald Trump was injured was because of female Secret Service agents and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The unsubstantiated accusation arose after photos and edited videos featuring female Secret Service agents spread online, along with allegations that the assassination attempt on Trump happened because the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, is a woman. Conservative media pundit Ann Coulter promoted a petition calling for the firing of Cheatle, citing the Secret Service chief’s goal of increasing the number of female agents to 30 percent.
“Absolute humiliation for this gaggle of female Secret Service Agents,” right-wing content creator Benny Johnson captioned one video on X, writing lower down in the post that “DEI Secret Service make Presidents LESS Safe.” The post was viewed nearly 9 million times.
I don’t think anyone on the right was claiming that Trump was injured because of female Secret Service agents. They noted that their work around Trump after the shooting looked shoddy. There is no good security reason for the fat agent to hide behind Trump.
Trump does not want obese agents. A typical liberal talking point is that Trump chooses his security detail, it’s not something that the Biden administration imposes upon him. I don’t think so. According to the book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service:
Trump… remained obsessed with getting overweight agents removed from their posts when he saw them at the White House or working near him on presidential events. “I want these fat guys off my detail,” Trump told advisers, who felt the president might be confusing officers with agents. “How are they going to protect me and my family if they can’t run down the street?”
Why do the female @SecretService agents keep getting photographed … ducking?
Their entire job is to be the wall. To stand when no one else will. To make an alternate target so the protectee is less vulnerable.
A clear difference. You didn’t see agents fumbling to holster their damn weapons and fiddling with their shades in the Reagan photo. pic.twitter.com/QnQBiXvgxs
After Trump Assassination Attempt, Right Points Finger at Female Agents
The rush by conservatives to pin blame for the shooting on women in the protective detail reflects a broader opposition among Republicans to diversity efforts in hiring.
In the hours after the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump, a sexist theory explaining how the Secret Service could have allowed such a grave security failure emerged in right-wing circles: It was the fault of incompetent women in his security detail.
“Look, I’m not sure about who the individuals are on the individual detail, Secret Service, but I can tell you under this Biden administration, the one thing I’ve seen is massive D.E.I. hires,” Representative Cory Mills of Florida said on Fox News, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
“And I can tell you when you primarily, when you primarily go after D-E-I,” Mr. Mills continued, “you end up with D-I-E.”
Benny Johnson, a right-wing commentator, was more blunt in a social media post viewed nearly 9 million times: “Absolute humiliation for this gaggle of female Secret Service Agents,” he wrote in a post that showed the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, adding: “DEI Secret Service make Presidents LESS Safe.”
From an overwhelmingly male phalanx of agents guarding Mr. Trump that day, these critics pointed out a trio — visibly shorter than their peers and with their hair pulled back in a bun, a ponytail and with hairpins, respectively, as they put themselves in harm’s way to protect the former president — for criticism. Video of their movements, including a moment in which one visibly struggled to holster a weapon, has fueled an outcry among conservatives who have pinned the agency’s failings on its women, suggesting they were only hired to diversify the predominantly male organization.
I’m thinking about the Corey Comperatore story. Would a liberal husband be as quick and eager to sacrifice his life for his family as a conservative? Would a husband be as quick and eager to sacrifice his life for his wife’s if she was a feminist?
I’m not aware of the concept of honor playing a big role in any of liberalism’s important texts.
* Ralph Peters observes that the Obama administration was blindsided by the outrage provoked by its decision to release five terrorist prisoners in exchange for the return of one Sergeant Bergdahl, who was reported to have deserted his post in Afghanistan before being captured by a Taliban-allied group. The administration’s surprise, writes Peters, reflected “a fundamental culture clash” betokening the administration’s contempt for Americans “so dumb” as to join the military rather than attending Harvard. Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice praised Bergdahl for serving “with honor and distinction.” But she failed to appreciate that desertion is among the very worst transgressions a soldier can commit against his comrades, and is not at all like “sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.” The problem wasn’t just the strategic wisdom of the prisoner exchange, but the cultural values which it ratified, the imposition of liberal norms to the detriment of military virtue.
* Dissenting in United States v. Virginia, which held unconstitutional the Virginia Military Institute’s policy of excluding women, Justice Scalia wrote that “[i]n an odd sort of way, it is precisely VMI’s attachment to such old-fashioned concepts as manly ‘honor’ that has made it, and the system it represents, the target of those who today succeed in abolishing public single-sex education.”151Writing for the Court, Justice Ginsburg had assumed the posture of the hard-nosed technocrat painstakingly scrutinizing the facts before her, asking how much evidence is required to prove that women cannot adapt to a VMI education. But Justice Scalia’s suggestion is that the narrow terms of Equal Protection review conceal the true stakes. Those who pushed to overturn VMI’s historical traditions were concerned, not to uproot irrational preconceptions about women’s capabilities, but to advance an agenda of social engineering, to discredit an ideal that they despise as archaic and benighted. Manly honor is simply incompatible with a hygienic conception of life. Liberals will chalk up their reservations about “manly honor” to concerns about sexism and gender inequality. But conservative claimants of cultural oppression trace this high-mindedness to a specific cultural ethos. “It is male individuality, exuberance, and aggressiveness,” writes F. Carolyn Graglia, “that must be most stringently curbed and disciplined to meet the requirements of bureaucratic success.” Bureaucracies are “more hospitable to the effete, androgynous male who fits the feminist mold of manhood.”152Liberalsopposemanly honor, not to promote gender equality, but by virtue of their primordial attraction to the disciplined conformism of an institutional ethos. A hygienic conception of life cannot tolerate male individuality, exuberance, and aggressiveness, which are now condemned as dangerous atavisms that threaten our rational social order. Equal protection review is merely the ideological façade behind which liberalism targets these atavisms. Here as elsewhere, conservative claimants of cultural oppression see the political as emerging out of the ostensibly apolitical. Where the elites contrapose equality to inequality, conservatives see a contest between the elites’ supposedly higher civilization and the half-savage relics of past times, themselves. This deeper layer of social meaning explains the selectivity with which feminist principles are actually applied. Ingraham notes that while a global rap superstar can “get away with carrying out a simulated rape of a young woman on the stage, ”such shenanigans would have provoked a deafening outcry from elites had they been performed by American soldiers stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Inevitably, the performance would be cited as incontrovertible evidence of the military’s misogynistic culture.
* The pre-modern world was one that inverted the existentialist motto, so that essence precedes existence, a world in which one’s power to define the meaning of one’s life is shaped and constrained by an objective order of things, the background against which people made sense of themselves as agents. Living a full life meant recognizing one’s place within this order, which in turn meant acknowledging one’s dependence on it. For the success of one’s life was a function of whether it instantiated this order. This pre-modern “order of things” could be rejected rather than embraced. Hence the possibility of sin or dishonor. But it could not be disregarded, because one was then defined by sin or dishonor.
* the early modern theorists saw commercial prosperity as an antidote to the temptations of vainglory. Just as the people would be ruled by the ruler, so the ruler would be ruled by his interests—which had now been set in opposition to mere passions like honor, with all their arbitrariness, idiosyncrasy, and unpredictability. In a similar vein, Robert Kagan notes that liberalism could have harnessed individual egoism to commercial expansion only by first overcoming an older order grounded in “intangible goods” like the glory of the king, the honor of the nobles, or the republican virtues of pagan antiquity.13The dismissal of “intangible goods” as mere vainglory is part and parcel of the repudiation of anthropocentricity and the rise of the disengaged subject who can “step back” from inherited teleologies. Whereas commercial expansion can be measured non-anthropocentrically, honor and glory presuppose thicker cosmologies, an intuitive sense of things’ significance that counts as irredeemably subjective within the modern naturalistic worldview.
* Liberals’ exasperation over conservatives’ preoccupation with “intangible” or “merely symbolic” goods like national honor, the moral fiber of society, and so forth is merely the latest iteration of the social ideals by which the modern age has always set itself against a benighted teleological past. The sharp dichotomization between the “symbolic” and the “substantive” is simply one way of articulating the subtraction account-driven contraposition between superstitious pre-moderns self-indulgently succumbing to the allure of inherited teleological regimes and self-critical moderns with the discipline to resist these temptations. To borrow from Hirschman, where conservatives are governed by the passions, liberals are governed by the interests.
* The targets of the elites’ “ordering impulses” were once the borderline paganism of those fascinated by charged objects, the peasantry’s predilection for malingering at the expense of productive labor and village-consciousness at the expense of nation-consciousness, its raucous and often violent street carnivals, and most importantly the honor ethic of the warrior classes, whose vainglorious impulses were incompatible with the smooth functioning of a commercial society.
* Lamenting the gender integration of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) ordered by the Supreme Court in United States v. Virginia, Justice Scalia concluded his dissent by remarking that it was “powerfully impressive” that a public institution would require all first-year students to keep VMI’s “Code of the Gentlemen” on their person. The Code, part of which Justice Scalia includes in his opinion, specifies: “Without a strict observance of the fundamental Code of Honor, no man, no matter how ‘polished,’ can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice…or he is not a Gentleman.”
* …honor is, as Peter Berger observes, as little respected in contemporary culture, and especially among intellectuals, as is chastity. Honor and chastity are both atavisms in a modern society, dismissed “as ideological leftovers in the consciousness of obsolete classes, such as military officers or ethnic grandmothers.” Whereas insult to honor was once deemed a serious social, and possibly legal, offense, someone who now fights to defend his honor will be seen as neurotic, abnormally sensitive, or hopelessly provincial. These judgments are now the received wisdom. After all, honor cannot be translated into non-anthropocentric terms. And this is what enables liberals to dismiss “traditional values” like honor as so much empty bluster, the symptoms of emotional conflict and intellectual confusion rather than genuine goods.
[Peter Berger:] “In a world of honor, the individual discovers his true identity in his roles, and to turn away from the roles is to turn away from himself—in “false consciousness,” one is tempted to add. In a world of dignity, the individual can only discover his true identity by emancipating himself from his socially imposed roles—the latter are only masks, entangling him in illusion, “alienation” and “bad faith.””
* The problem for the conservative is that he still clings to a world of honor, whether this be through the Code of the Gentleman, the preternaturally clean-cut look of conservative think tank interns, the patriotism of Sarah Palin rally attendees, or any number of other ways. And this is the ultimate source of liberal animus. The liberal’s reaction to the Gentleman will be informed not primarily by what he does or believes, but by what he is. The Gentleman’s original sin isn’t his chauvinism or classism, but the form of consciousness that facilitates these qualities, his indisposition toward the disengagement that would compel him to see through his sense of honor, to see through his hero-system.
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
