Chicago Boyz Archive

John Fonte Review of America 3.0, “E Pluribus Bonum”

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John Fonte’s thoughtful review of America 3.0 is entitled “E Pluribus Bonum.” Mr. Fonte is paraphrasing the motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unam — one from many. He is saying from many, the good.

Mr. Fonte’s professional concern in many of his writings has been on immigration, assimilation and national culture. And he correctly notes that we argue that America has indeed formed something good out of the many who have come here. We note the extraordinary assimilative powers of the American people, and of the Anglosphere generally in our book.

The mantra “We are a nation of immigrants” is repeated endlessly, but this incantation is essentially misleading. The addition of one adjective, “assimilated,” as in, “We are a nation of assimilated immigrants,” would greatly clarify our understanding of American identity. The question then becomes, Assimilated to what?

In America 3.0, we answer that question.

“Our American culture today,” Bennett and his co-author, Michael J. Lotus, tell us, “is part of a living and evolving organism, spanning centuries.” At the center of that culture is the American nuclear family. In the American nuclear family (as opposed to the traditional extended family), individuals are free to select their own spouses; grown children leave their parents’ homes and form new households; women enjoy a high degree of freedom compared with those in other cultures; children have no legal right to demand any inheritance from their parents; parents have no legal right to demand support from their adult children; and people have no right to expect help from their relatives.
 
The consequences of the American type of nuclear family, according to Bennett and Lotus, are that Americans are more individualistic, entrepreneurial, and mobile than other peoples. Suburbia is a major consequence, as American nuclear families prefer dispersed single-family homes over dense urban arrangements. Despite what they admit are “chaotic” changes in American family life, Bennett and Lotus do not “anticipate a basic change in cultural attitudes” that are “shaped by upbringing, language, institutions, and unconscious patterns of behavior that take centuries to form.”
 
Applying their anthropological-historical analysis, the authors note that the nuclear family emerged among the English. Bennett and Lotus state explicitly that the English family type became the American-style nuclear family, and this “underlying Anglo-American family type was the foundation for all the institutions, laws, and cultural practices that gave rise to our freedom and prosperity over the centuries.”

Mr. Fonte concludes on this note:

Bennett and Lotus have produced a very important evergreen book making a strong case for their myriad arguments. Interest among the conservative intelligentsia should be intense. There have already been endorsements from Glenn Reynolds, Michael Barone, Jonah Goldberg, and John O’Sullivan. Rebuttals from our friends at the Claremont Institute are sure to come:”ˆAs Straussians rather than Burkeans, they will insist that politics (the Declaration of Independence)”ˆtrumps culture (the nuclear family).

We are grateful to Mr. Fonte for his encouraging review. RTWT.

Daniel Hannan Review of America 3.0

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Daniel Hannan‘s wonderful review of America 3.0 is entitled “America’s greatest days lie ahead provided she is true to herself.” This is a sentiment with which we heartily agree.

Mr. Hannan understands and concurs with the both the letter and the spirit of our book. For example, he shares our fundamental optimism:

A generation from now, Americans will be richer, more leisured, healthier and longer-lived than ever. That sentence could have been written at any time since the Mayflower landed (at least of the settlers; it was a different story for the indigenous tribes). It would always have prompted scepticism; and it would always have been true.
 
These days, it is a sentiment we rarely hear, which is all the more reason to pay attention when we do. In America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century, James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus begin by conjuring a cheerful vision of the United States in 2040.
 
… such a vision may look naïve. But when we ponder human history up to the present, it’s entirely plausible.

Mr. Hannan also agrees with our argument regarding the critical importance of the absolute nuclear family.

The point of the book is not to laud or criticise the Anglosphere’s nuclear family, but to show why it is immediately responsible for the individualistic culture that we share with only a handful of lands (notably the Nordic countries and the Netherlands). It made possible capitalism, because economic relationships were primarily mediated through cash rather than family obligations. It facilitated the industrial revolution, because people did not feel tied to their family plots. It opened up vast new landmasses to settlement, as children set out to establish their own nuclear families. It encouraged the assimilation of immigrants, who could make their way as individuals (though some first-generation Americans understandably struggle to adjust to the unfamilial attitudes of their children). It explains why we hanker after our own little plots, instead of living in neatly stacked apartments or, to flip it about, it explains the suburbs that foreign visitors find so ugly and vulgar.

Please RTWT.

And go ahead and preorder Mr. Hannan’s forthcoming book, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. Mr. Hannan tells he draws on many of the same sources we do, and we are eager to see his take on the history.

Jacksonian America Remembers 9/11

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The roar of motorcycles, a din, a torrent of noise, American flags whipping past, hundreds, thousands of bikes. Jacksonian America on the move is a thing of great beauty.

Hello, DC? AMERICA dropped by to get in your face, make a lot of noise, disrupt your fashionable luncheon schedule, make it clear it is not your friend, and remind you that you are doing a rotten job, and your attempted “fundamental transformation” needs to be scrapped.

Have a nice day.

James Kent on the American Founding

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Happily for this country, we received our jurisprudence from England in its highest vigour, and in its most cultivated state. The leading statesmen in the colonies, and especially the members of the bar, had the sagacity to perceive, and the courage and patriotism to assert, the indefeasible title of their countrymen to all the securities and blessings of the English common law. They had inherited its free and liberal spirit, and in almost every colony there were individual lawyers, equal in character, learning, and eloquence, to their brethren in the courts of the parent state. They were lawyers of the old school, who actually led on the American revolution. They were the daring patriots and intelligent statesmen who roused their countrymen to the duty of insisting on the exclusive right of self-taxation, and to all the other liberties and privileges of English subjects, resting on the basis of the common law, and the sacred stipulations of chartered contracts. It was the lawyers that guided the deliberations of the congress of 1774, and penned its admirable addresses, and stimulated their associates to unite with them in pouring forth their grievances and their exhausted patience, and their determined purpose, in the monumental act of independence.

An Address Delivered Before the Law Association of the City of New York, October 1, 1836, by The Hon. James Kent.

We had this to say about James Kent in America 3.0:

We ended up with a common American legal culture for reasons beyond the Constitution. In the early years of the country there was popular animosity toward anything English and some resistance to relying on the Common Law and English precedent. American lawyers and judges rejected this notion and created an American style of law that was continuous with England’s, though not the same. They managed to keep this system roughly consistent across the entire country by relying on legal treatises that were considered authoritative. The most important example was James Kent’s Commentaries on American Law, which went through many editions.

Chancellor Kent was one of the most important lawyers and legal thinkers in the history of the Anglosphere. America is an enormous free trade area where business can be transacted efficiently over 3.7 million square miles among 310 million, or more, Americans. We have a common legal culture which makes this possible in significant part due to the work of Chancellor Kent.

The lawyers never get any credit, though Ronald Coase appreciated what they contribute. The quote above shows that James Kent not only made a quiet, almost invisible contribution to founding our nation. He also understood and appreciated what the lawyers of the Founding generation gave us, precisely because they were thinking as lawyers and made a legal case for our independence, and preserved the legal culture we had inherited from Britain, the common law — though of course with American characteristics.

Georgene Rice Interviews Lex about America 3.0

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A big THANK YOU to Georgene Rice, who interviewed me today about America 3.0 Georgene’s show is on KPDQ in Portland, Oregon.

Georgene was glad to hear an optimistic message about America’s future. I am glad I could provide one! Our current mess is temporary. The transition may be very unpleasant, but it will happen. The more engaged and involved we all are, the better it will go. While our book is not about day-to-day politics, we do not deny the necessity of political action. But for political action to be effective, it must be motivated by hope, by goals and by a vision of where all the effort is going to lead.

Our vision of America 3.0 won’t be exactly how things will end up, of course. The world of 2040 will be full of more surprises than we can dream of today. But it is our best estimate of where things can and should go. The history we have uncovered, and the technology we are aware of, and the failure of the current political arrangements, which is increasingly obvious, all point toward a free and prosperous future. But it is up to us to make that happen. It will be hard, so stay cheerful!