JUST A RETURN TO HUME:

What Is Postmodernity? (Zygmunt Bauman, October 10, 2024, Church Life Journal)

When Toynbee first announced spotting a gray postmodern era that stretched at the other end of the Modern Age, what he meant was simply indeterminacy. What this way of coining the name (particularly the use of the prefix “post” as the only differentiating/signifying unit) conveyed, in the first place, was the absence (or ignorance) of any positive distinctive features which, in addition to setting the hazy prospect apart from the preceding period, could also give it a degree of internal unity and an identity of its own.

The Anglosphere avoided the catastrophe of Modernity because our philosophers always recognized that Reason was incapable of internal unity and thus could have no distinct identity. It was a faith all along.

THE FOUNDING DID NOT BEGIN IN THE 1700s:

The Lasting Importance of the Case of Proclamations (John Kennerly Davis, Oct 26, 2024, federalist Society)

In the fall of 1610, representatives of Parliament officially requested Sir Edward Coke and three other noted jurists to provide Parliament with a formal legal opinion as to whether and to what extent the King could rule by proclamation in contradiction of the limits set by the laws enacted by Parliament. Specifically, Parliament asked the jurists for their opinion on the legality of two proclamations that had been recently issued by the King, one to prohibit the construction of additional new buildings in London and one to outlaw the making of wheat starch used to stiffen the dress collars widely worn at the time.

After taking the matter under advisement for several weeks, the jurists issued their opinion in the Case of Proclamations. The opinion found that the King could not, by proclamation, create new offenses or arbitrarily extend his administrative reach into areas not sanctioned by the laws enacted by Parliament.

As Coke notes in the opinion, “the King cannot change any part of the common law, nor create any offense, by his proclamation, which was not an offense before, without parliament.” This is so because, “The King has no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows him.”

James resisted the judgment and continued to argue that his proclamations had the force of statutes enacted by parliament. Nevertheless, the opinion was issued and the case decided. The vitally important principles of law, limited government, and separation of powers were strongly affirmed. These principles would inspire the English Bill of Rights in 1689 and our own Constitution in 1787.

They should continue to inspire us today as we labor to preserve our constitutional order against the relentless onslaught of those who work tirelessly to extend by regulatory proclamations the arbitrary reach of the administrative state into areas not sanctioned by the laws enacted by our Congress.

WE HAVEN’T FACED AN EXTERNAL THREAT SINCE BEFRIENDING BRITAIN:

Are We Too Worried About International Threats?: We should chill out and let the threats to America self-destruct—even China (John Mueller, Oct 31, 2024, Discourse)

Because of its size and economic growth, China is now in second place globally in total GDP (though 78th in per capita GDP), a position it has occupied for most of the past two millennia. Partly impelled by that development, it wants to be seen as a “great power.” As part of this, China is seeking to gain “influence” and “to assert dominance in East Asia and project influence globally” by lending money through its Belt and Road Initiative to a vast array of other countries and by engaging from time to time in “wolf warrior diplomacy” using economic and military muscle to badger and to bully.

However, these efforts have been remarkably futile and counterproductive. Rather than generating admiration or obedience from countries that once wished it well, resentment at its “wolf warrior” antics has soared not only in the West but also in important neighbors like Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and, most significantly, Taiwan, pushing some of them further into the embrace of the United States.

The Belt and Road Initiative is awash in unpaid debt, and loan outlays were cut from $75 billion in 2016 to $4 billion in 2019. As former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has recently observed, “The BRI is often depicted as helping China win hearts and minds, but in reality it is not winning anything” as recipients grow “frustrated with the corruption, poor safety and labor standards, and fiscal unsustainability associated with its projects.”

China’s Taiwan Weakness
The report sees China’s potential future invasion of Taiwan as its first salvo in its drive to “dominate” East Asia. To supply his military with some guidance, Xi has given it the goal of being able to successfully invade Taiwan by 2027, a mission that the report and many others in the West consider ominous. However, Timothy Heath of RAND points out that in setting that timeline, Xi was seeking primarily “to keep the military focused on its goal of becoming more professional and resist tendencies of slipping into corruption and lethargy,” and that there appears to be no evidence of an intent, in anything like the immediate or not-so-immediate future, to actually invade. Xi himself is reported to be exasperated at the West’s claim and insists that plans to invade in 2027 (or, for that matter, in 2035) simply do not exist.

Moreover, the problems accompanying such an effort are likely to be sobering to military planners. The report does note that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be economically devastating, but it fails to note the difficulty, emphasized by many in the U.S. military, of a massive amphibious landing: Stormy seas and weather rule out landings for the vast majority of the year, and potential landing beaches are small in number and well-fortified. In addition, resistance in the form of guerrilla and urban warfare in the mountainous interior by some of the 20 million intensely hostile Taiwanese residents could prove to be extensive.

Moreover, in the contingency considered by some analysts to be “most likely,” a military conquest of Taiwan would require China to outdo Pearl Harbor by raining thousands of missiles not only on Taiwan but on American military bases and ships in Japan and Guam. The judgment of the CIA, according to its director William Burns last year, is that “President Xi and his military leaders have doubts today about whether they could accomplish that invasion,” and that “if they look at Putin’s experience in Ukraine, that’s probably reinforced some of those doubts.”

Impelled by such considerations, longtime diplomat and China-watcher Ambassador Winston Lord has concluded that the chances of an invasion of Taiwan in the next decade or two are “somewhere between one and two percent.”

The Potential for Chinese Decline or Stagnation
A more plausible occurrence is that rather than rising to anything that could be conceived as “dominance,” China could decline into substantial economic stagnation.