If you are new to the Band, please see this post for an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Older posts are in the archive on the right.
Other links: The Band on Gab; The Band on Oneway
The last few posts have been following a line of inquiry that started by wondering how something as dehumanizing as modern architecture could become so prevalent. The problem turned out to be fake theoretical dogma, which led us further back to the recurring fallacy of secular transcendence, or the fiction that limited human minds can arrive at transcendent truth (here's the first post on it). Architecture just takes this false certainty from philosophy to stylistic choice. The absurdity of discursive rules in the arts is just a symptom of the larger intellectual incoherence at the heart of the modern west.
Pantheon, 113-125 AD, Rome
Iconic buildings like the Pantheon became symbols of transcendental ideals because of their simple geometric harmony.
The body of the building was a perfect cylinder topped with a semi-circular dome. The front provided the model for a monumental classical portico.
The cut-away shows the perfect proportions of the interior. A sphere that fit inside the dome would just touch the floor.
The Enlightenment was not a singular thing. In general histories, it is usually associated with France, but we have noted a distinct British form as well that was also influential. They start from different places - rationalist philosophizing in France and empirical observation in England, but both wind up expressing faith in fake man-made “Laws”. The intellectual legacy has been cultish worship of objective falsehoods with a strength that seems proportional to their obvious falsehood. Everyone knows that equalism, the blank slate, simplistic “states of nature”, and the infallibility of human reason are patently untrue. The frenzy with which their advocates defend them shows the desperate defensiveness found in any liar.
By their fruits ye shall know them...
Look at modern Paris. This is the legacy of Enlightenment egalitarianism
Funny how threats to biodiversity are taken very seriously by the left, except when applied to humans. The open borders mass invasion philosophy of the globalists ticks quite a few of the categories in this graphic.
The English version is more insidious, beginning as it did with the early adoption of Scientific Revolution empiricism. The potential was here for a counter argument to the fake laws of rationalism, but it was not to last. Foreign rulership, fake patriotism, parasitic aristocrats, and self-interest of the financial elite all contribute to the grand bait and switch of pretending circumstantial events are transcendental universal laws. This gets to the same place as the French version - faith in the unreal - but with a fig leaf of empiricism to make it seem more legitimate.
Pietro Fabris, Kenneth Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, at Home in Naples: Fencing Scene, 1770, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 47.6 cm, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland
Soft, aristocratic rationalism is still fake truth.
American Enlightenment
At the broadest level, the American Enlightenment combines elements of both. The leading thinkers are culturally English, though modified by then experiences of colonial life. At the same time, French equalism runs through the philosophical foundation of the founders.
This is hard to write, because the Band loves America. It sheds tears for promise squandered and tempers grim determination in the face of an uncertain future with the hope that America will rise again in some form.
But the reality is inescapable:
This took a long time to bear poisonous fruit in a large part because of the exceptional qualities of the American people, but the looming failure is evident in today’s mess of hostile interest groups forced together by an increasingly authoritarian government.
What happened?
Winslow Homer, Waiting for an Answer, 1872, oil on canvas, Private collection
It is important to reiterate that the American Enlightenment is not the same as the American people. Enlightenments are elite phenomena - most people had little interest in debating philosophical absolutisms.
The Revolution was driven by a small minority, and most of these were motivated by more practical political concerns. The philosophy comes in with the framing of a new country - in drafting the constitution and other founding documents. The people would assume that these were written in their best interests, but it’s the elites that do the drafting and class divisions insure that the interests never truly align.
Liborio Prosperi, Statesmen No.544: Caricature of The Lord Rothschild, from Vanity Fair, June 9, 1888
In England, the elites were hereditary aristocrats and a rising economic class that aspired to aristocratic culture. This never really changes - the acquisition of a peerage by the Rothschilds is a good example. When the king is foreign, it removes the pressure for the aristocrats to be English as well.
Joseph Blackburn, Isaac Winslow and His Family, 1755, oil on canvas, 138.43 x 201.29 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
America was not aristocratic and ultimately rebelled against the foreign king. The elites here were either intellectuals, economic successes, or both - the life of the mind requires financial freedom. But they were still elites.
Unfortunately, rejecting formal social classes was a big part of accepting blank slate equalist nonsense from France.
Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant, Plan for the city of Washington, developed 1791, colored print, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
The "rational" plan for the new federal capital was laid out in its monotonous glory by... wait for it... a Frenchman! Who better to reflect the character of the American nation?
This is not the place for a deep dive into the founding documents of the new country. The framers themselves didn’t agree on key philosophical points. But a quick look at the constitution is enough to demonstrate the impossibility of the American project.
Map of world IQs. The Band has previously called attention to the absurdity of man-made "absolutes" like equalism or "inalienable rights".
This map isn't a perfect measure of human capital but with ranges as wide as these, the ability to operate in American society becomes an issue.
What “we hold” is irrelevant when “we” are objectively wrong. Feelings are only credited as arguments on the left. But then again, the French Enlightenment was radically leftist.
Fake metaphysics makes an appearance too. What is this “Creator”? God? Yahweh? Allah? Chaos? The Manitou? Illuvatar? One can assume something akin to the Christian God from the historical context, but statements of absolute truth don’t require contextual keys. That's what makes them absolutes. If you posit a supreme being as the grounds for universal law, it behooves you to a) identify that being, and b) provide some justification for giving it metaphysical authority. Otherwise, your argument consists of “because my imaginary friend said so”.
Seriously, granting rights means this Creator has a conscious will. How is this known? How can you define the motivations of a being that is otherwise undefined? Claiming to positive knowledge of an unknown is self-contradictory. This picture is less flimsy an argument because it is not logically impossible.
Then there’s the other authority - We the people. This is subject to the same question: who, exactly, is being referred to? Consider the difference between the American nation and the population of the British American colonies. Historical maps show broad divisions between English, French, and Spanish territories, but these only indicate political control.
The reality is that colonial America was much more culturally diverse than the mother country. Sizeable populations of Germans, Dutch, French, various African and Indian nations, Scots, and others were all present and in different standings with the colonial administration before the Revolution.
Plimoth Plantation, a living history site near Plymouth, MA; Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Puritan, 1904, bronze, Philadelphia, based on 1883-86 version in Springfield, MA
Even the English population wasn’t culturally homogeneous. The Puritans in Massachusetts were just one example of English outcasts who had relocated to the New World to live according to their beliefs.
The colonies had distinct identities arising from unique histories and demographics. Consider the build up to the Revolution - a confederation of states reaching common purpose, not a single top-down pan-American movement. This is evident in the relations with the other British colonies that opted out, and later went on to become Canada. They were invited to join, and, apart from Benedict Arnold’s hi-jinx in Quebec, when they declined, were largely left alone.
John Trumbull, The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775, 1786, oil on canvas, 62.5 x 93.9 c, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
Conversely, had Nova Scotia decided to join in, the flag would have had one more star and stripe, and things would been pretty much the same.
Map of North America in 1845 with an independent Texas. The northern border with the British colonies was surprisingly stable.
The historical reality was that the Revolution was conceived as an uncoerced union, though that perspective changed completely within a century. One could point to the raids and skirmishes of 1812 as evidence to the contrary, but it was an isolated incident. And when you consider what an America hell-bent on conquest would do - the Indian nations, the South in the War between the States - it’s obvious that membership was a free association.
Even a quick glance at history shows that the colonial America was not a nation, but a collection of nations imperfectly divided by state lines. The Republic was conceived to balance the diverse histories and cultures of the colonies with the advantages and efficiencies of the federal umbrella. The term federal, rather than national, makes sense for this government, since it does not encompass a nation-state as historically understood.
An imaginary mass of indeterminate people makes sense from a French Enlightenment perspective, since in blank slate world, history is irrelevant and everyone there is essentially the same. But this is not applicable to the reality of Colonial America.
But... but... muh Constitution...
The United States (read the name again) Constitution is a fantastic set of rules if the ideals are honestly embraced and committed to. The appeal is easy to understand. But it is also predicated on objective falsehoods and metaphysical chicanery, and was undermined by its own framers within a few years.
Benjamin West, The Treaty of Penn with the Indians, 1771-72, oil on canvas, 190 x 274 cm, State Museum of Pennsylvania
Consider the fundamental question of American identity.
What is an American?
One would expect the founding documents of a country to spell out clearly who the people are. This brings us to the Preamble to the Constitution, a short introduction to set up the document to follow:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It famously refers to their "Posterity", without spelling out who "they" are. This is frustrating because the demographic and historical reality of colonial America means that this word has several conflicting interpretations. Taken literally, it suggests that America exists for the descendants of the founding people. But the Article One is already calling on Congress to codify naturalization, which appears shortly after the ratification.
The Naturalization Act of 1790
Extending Americanness to people who are by definition not posterity means that the terms of the Preamble were jettisoned almost immediately. Unless we retroactively redefine posterity as “all the world”, a historic absurdity that is more or less the modern leftist notion of an American.
So who was the posterity? There are several candidates. The most straightforward would be the direct descendants of the Anglo-American stock that made up the American nation. But this is immediately contradicted by the discussion of naturalization. You are either kin or not - literally can’t be both. Either the constitution logically self-detonates into irrelevance or "posterity" was used more loosely.
Looking through the lens of Enlightenment blank slate universalism, posterity could refer to the descendants of all who were here at the time of the founding. The idea being that the colonial populations came together in colonial rebellion to forge a new nation. This is quite likely.
Cover of Theater Programme for Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, 1916, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department
One founding myth of globalism is the notion of America as a "melting pot", or a place where people of any background are magically transformed into "Americans". Of course, Americans are never defined. America is presented as an abstract land of free stuff to come and take advantage of. The usual drivel about "seeking a better life" always leaves out who's stuff this means taking. A more accurate term is "theft".
This play is considered to be the main popularizer of the American melting pot. It is worth noting that Zangwill never lived in America. His vision reflects a neurotic desire for a world without religious or cultural divides - John Lennon's Imagine avant la lettre - and has nothing to do with the history of the American people. The foreign aspect of this mythology is of underrated importance.
The appeal to globalists is the denial of the existence of an American nation. There is no essential American if anyone can be melted into one. But anyone with function senses knows that people are different in norms and abilities, and many can't or won't fit with the founding peoples.
Grant E. Hamilton, Where the Blame Lies, 1891, chromolithograph, published by Sackett & Wilhelms Litho. Co. 1891, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC
Why are they coming? Seeking the "freedom" to take from others is not the same as wanting to internalize American culture, even if this was possible. Today's identity politics makes this obvious.
People don't abandon their cultural formations in numbers that matter, or expand their intellectual abilities at all. The new globalist anti-American myth is the "salad bowl" - same premise of no American people, but now everyone gets to wear their traditional costumes and marry children if they want. They still get free stuff though.
Let's return to the relation between foreign authors and the myth of the melting pot. We can throw the salad bowl there as well, since it a product of the unassimilated foreigners who are here because the melting pot was a myth - all fruits of the same tree. It is true that Colonial America was made up of different nationalities, but no where do we find the notion that these will magically become one people. Where does this retarded empirical falsehood get started?
Meet Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur, aka. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, a French traveler by way of England who developed an infatuation with Colonial America. His Letters from an American Farmer (1782) has become an important piece of "American" literary history (click for a link to the text). Here is the first American edition and a few others.
The book is a collection of letters from an imaginary colonial farmer named James that combined de Crèvecœur's travel observations and feelings about the new country. It's success made it influential in building the European myth of America as a melting pot open to all.
This fabulist needs a closer look.
Anonymous painting of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur in the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, St. Johnsbury, Vermont
There are a few red flags with J. Hector. His aristocratic mien suggests his "farming" experiences weren't exactly typical of the colonial experience. As a foreigner, he had none of the deeper understanding that comes from being raised in a culture. His enthusiasm was the typical romanticized projection of the disaffected expat. And he was French, giving his romanticized projections the noxious taint of Enlightenment mythology.
The whole mess is fake, starting with "James", de Crèvecœur's imaginary ideal American, and the Utopian monoculture that he and his imaginary ideal compatriots have forged. This is where the foreign perspective - same holds for Zangwill - is so toxic. Without the subtle understanding that comes from being native to a political entity, the faults and divisions are not always apparent. Add in Enlightenment nonsense about equalism and it is not surprising that a French dreamer imagines that the "new" world has the power to work miracles. The problem is taking him seriously.
Marval Comics' Plantman
De Crèvecœur serves up some flacid pantheism to account for this melting pot magic. He theorized that people are like plants and wondered whether the "soil" where someone is raided accounts for their natures. This scientific absurdity may be the origin of "Magic Dirt" - the myth that coming to America can change ingrained human natures.
There is no substance to any of this. It is all the fantastical projection of an infatuated expat passed off as the homespun wisdom of one of these imaginary new
The appeal of magic dirt/certificate "citizenship" to globalists is the denial of the existence of an American nation. There is no essential American if anyone can be melted into one. But anyone with functioning senses knows that this is absurd.
This picture is literally self-contradictory without granting some magic power to being born on a continent. This is pantheism, and we are back in the that special sub-section of that realm of metaphysics and faith where empirical falsehoods are believed because we wish the true.
J.S. Pughe, Hyphenated American, from Puck, Vol. 45, No. 1170, August 9, 1899
It was clear over a century ago that people who aren't American have interests that aren't American. This has become painfully obvious today, Enlightenment lies notwithstanding.
Flags of the British Empire, from Our Flags and Their Significance by K. C. Byrde; Bristol British-Israel Association, 1920
The idea is an inverse of British imperialism. Instead of Britishness being visited on other nations, Americanness is contacted by coming here. But the reduction of a people to some cheap symbols and slogans and a scrap of paper is the same vile anti-nationalism.
Original Eli Whitney Cotton Gin
Whitney's mechanical processor is an example of the ingenuity that eventually pushed America to the top of the economic food chain. This technological, material advancement combined with a belief in American exceptionalism drove a more extreme myth of universal human progress than the British version discussed in the last post.
Antonio Gisbert, Desembarco de los puritanos en América, 1883, oil on canvas, 294 x 395 cm, Senate of Spain
John Winthrop and his "city on the hill" was just more fake metaphysics, but it planted a historical seed for the fake faith that the magic dirt of a different place could fundamentally change human nature.
News flash: it didn't.
Putting it together graphically, we can see that there were converging factors that prepared a perfect field for our current globalist toxin. The fake metaphysics of cities on hills, fake truths of Enlightenment rationalism, and fake morality of technological progress probably made civic nationalism inevitable. The problem is that no one in the colonial era could have foreseen the world to come - the centralization of media, school, and other cultural organs, the corrupting influence of immense wealth on a centralized government, the emergence of parasitic public and non-profit "sectors", the public rejection of Christian morality, the traitorous submission to "international" bodies, the invade the world/invite the world foreign policy - and how this would transform the pernicious virtue signaling of melting pots and freedom into the dissolution of the American nation.
The Band’s take on the Preamble is that the framers were probably thinking of their families and communities reflexively when choosing the word posterity because they could not have anticipated the massive foreign invasions to follow. But their actual use of it is charged with Enlightenment wishful thinking - a more abstract reference to the cultural “descendants” of the framers. Their scope was somewhat narrower than the pushers of third world hordes, but the foundation on civic nationalism is the same.
The difficulty in defining who "We the People" are circles back to the idea that the American Enlightenment is a hybrid of French and English Enlightenment ideologies. The cultural circumstances falsely elevated to universals and the notion that everyone aspires to them because of their absolute truth are familiar bait and switches. But consider the national culture - the quality of life that gave these myths a veneer of credibility was a result of a unique national culture of empiricism and ingenuity.
Benjamin West, Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, circa 1816, il on slate, 34 x 25.6 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Speaking generally, the backbone of American culture was a strain of English empiricism hardened by colonial self-reliance and tempered with a veneer of Shaftesbury’s good taste. Orderly and efficient without the inefficiencies of a rigid class system, the American nation was one of the most productive in human history.
But this was due to the favourable traits and conditions of the people rather than some magic topography, high ideals, or fake Creator.
But to the fantasists of the Enlightenment, people are fungible. All will be motivated to abandon old pathologies and buy in to the self-evidently superior American values. Why wouldn’t they? The values are self-evidently superior, and therefore, the law of rational self-interest - to cite another fake Enlightenment rule book - says that they have to adopt them. After all, they are choosing to come here, so they must be yearning to drop old identities and embrace being Americans.
It couldn’t be for welfare and free stuff...
The notion that people who were culturally, genetically, intellectual not American could, or more importantly, would transcend their own natures is idiocy. Facilitating their invasion is treasonous.
The point is that whatever the American nation was - Anglo posterity, the culture of the founders, citizen farmers - it was never synonymous with "people in America" or "the American state", and this is not adequately resolved in the constitution. Of course, the constitution is a covenant between an undefined "people" and a fake god dedicated to a "posterity" who's kinship was repudiated by its own writers. Establishing a federal state on faith in this will ultimately leave the nation rootless when the founding cultural principles are undermined from within.
Alexander Hay Ritchie, Sherman's March to the Sea, circa 1868. engraving, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
State governments were to provide an imperfect check on central authority in some sort of bullshit Hegelian synthesis of local and "national". But we've just seen that there was nothing "national" about the federal state. It is not surprising that it played out like any real bipolar power structure - the poles compete until one becomes dominant.
It took a long time to unravel, with lots of treachery and blindness. American ingenuity and productivity lifted a lot of boats and papered over issues, but impede or replace the American people and this all goes poof. And it is going poof because it is founded on incoherence and lies. Fake French universalisms and man made concepts of rights so absolute that they are upheld over the health and future of the nation. This is the path to the present, where the posterity is tax farmed to support parasitic “new Americans” and unaccountable globalist elites.
Speaking of the Constitution...
Enlightened Architecture
We can see these ideas take form in the architecture of the colonial and federal eras. America didn’t have the same architectural roots as England, but it did produce some excellent designers. What makes Thomas Jefferson so perfect in this context is how his skills fit the moment. Politically, he was a leading voice among the framers, a champion of public institutions, and a future president. His philosophy was shot through with French Enlightenment dogma, and his intellect and prominence made him a major advocate of rationalist idealism. He was also a first-rate architect.
Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, 1772 Charlottesville, VA
We saw Monticello in an earlier post, but it really is beautiful.
Jefferson was self-taught as an architect and is generally Palladian - he owned a copy of the Italian's Four Books of Architecture - but he drew on other influences as well, and always added his own twists.
Palladio, Villa Capra or La Rotonda, begun 1567, Vicenza, Italy
Palladio, Villa Badoer, 1563, Fratta Polesine, Italy
Lord Burlington, Chiswick House, 1729, London
Monticello's Palladian origins came via Burlington, whose Chiswick house was itself an amalgam of Palladio's designs. Jefferson lowered the profile and replaced the whitewashed walls with the warmer colors and textures of the Georgian brick that was popular in the colonies. The decoration is all of them is strictly neoclassical.
So absolute principles - Palladian neoclassicism - and contextual awareness, both stylistic - the brick - and environmental - the low profile - blends beautifully with the landscape. Sounds like a blend of... rationalism and empiricism. The reality is that Jefferson was something of an American Burlington - simultaneously socio-political and artistic elite - only shaped by colonial America rather than the early eighteenth-century English aristocracy.
Academical village of the University of Virginia: Rotunda and Lawn, from the south with cattleguard at foot of Lawn, 1856, color engraving, University of Virginia Visual History Collection
And today.
The University of Virginia may be Jefferson’s most accomplished design, and his central campus is still more or less intact. Even more than Monitcello, his design is an expression of Enlightenment idealism.
The centerpiece is a scaled down version of the Roman Pantheon, that model of ancient geometric simplicity loved by Neoclassicists everywhere.
Here too, Jefferson chose Georgian brick.
The sides of the Lawn are flanked by walkways and residential pavilions. There were each designed in a different style to illustrate the different types of architecture. The drawings show the classical Greek orders of Corinthian, Ionic, and Doric.
Individual differences pressed into a highly structured order beneath a "temple" of Enlightenment rationality. This is a good metaphor for the melting pot. Too bad it takes faith in something that doesn't exist and a designer the caliber of Jefferson to make it even look convincing.
The Federalist era gave America the Federal Style, another foreign import intended to transform historic national cultures into an imaginary ideal that can somehow be "egalitarian" and imperialistic at the same time. Nothing about fake mythology-building is coherent.
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, begun 1806, Baltimore, MD
Benjamin Latrobe was a British expat, a friend of Jefferson and other colonial elites, and arguably the first professional architect in America. He brought the latest versions of European neoclassism which combined with Jefferson's personalized Palladianism to spawn the closest thing to an "official" American style. The two even colaborated on the initial designs for the White House. This is a small circle with a lot of influence.
Latrobe's most impressive building has the classical simplicity of Jefferson's designs but imposing size and grandeur is more consistent with the imperial European nation-states. Note that the dome is a variation on the "turtle shell" shape of the Pantheon, as is the massive portico. Latrobe's use of the Ionic rather that the Corinthian order of the original is a sign of the new Greek Revival that brought from Europe and will be looked at in the next post.
Charles Bulfinch, Old State House, 1796, Hartford, CT
Latrobe's successor was Charles Bulfinch, perhaps the first American born professional architect, if such things matter. He continued in the same vein, pushing a Federal neoclassicism that embodied both the Enlightenment ideals and imperial reality of the new country.
All three architects were involved in the design of the Capitol building in Washington. Jefferson oversaw the original design competition and was responsible for Latrobe's modification of the original plan. When Bulfinch rebuilt the Capitol after it was burned in the British raid of 1812, he used a modified version of Latrobe's design. His most significant alteration is one of the most symbolic: the original low dome based on the Pantheon that was replaced in the 1850s.
Charles Bulfinch and others, United States Capitol, 1815-26, Washington, D.C., digital restoration of a half plate daguerreotype by John Plumbe, 1846, Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division
The grand neoclassicism is supposed to represent the equalist principles of the new country but does so in a foreign abstract language with no connection to the American nation.
John Vardy, Spencer House, begun 1756, London
The Capitol resembles the aristocratic bravado of Spencer House more than the homespun values of philosopher-farmers.
Note the reuse of the same motif regardless of the context.
Why on earth is the Pantheon a symbol of the American nation? The short answer is that this federal construct is not essentially American. The longer answer points us back towards modern architecture.
This is Enlightenment design at its finest. A "rational" symbol plucked out of its history and applied over and over without concern for location or purpose. A higher, theoretical "principle" lifted from pattern books and assigned a set of fake meanings based on age and shape. If this sounds at all familiar, it's because we are back in that dreamland where wishes are real and humans speak absolute truth into reality. No, we aren't talking animism, though it is close. This is...
And what comes on the heels of fake Truth...?
Wait... is that empire's music?