The State of the Union

. . . and What You Can Do About It

The following remarks were delivered recently at The Union League of Philadelphia.

I am here today to speak on the State of the Union. To that end, let me begin with a Trigger Warning: prepare to be triggered.

In the 1950s, Hungarian anti-communist dissidents had a black-pilled expression that sums up our state of affairs in 2025: “Situation hopeless, not yet bad.”

Let’s face an uncomfortable truth. None of us would be here today if we didn’t think that the United States of America—if not Western Civilization—was not in dire straits.

I don’t mean to suggest that we live in a Soviet-style totalitarian regime (that would be an insult to those who have), but there is no question that we have much less freedom today than we’ve had in the past. Freedom of thought, speech, assembly, association, religion, education, parenting, production, and trade are all under pounding assault.

It also seems clear that the cultural fabric of the nation is coming unstitched. In my view, the state of our culture is considerably worse today than it was 50-40-30-20 or even 10 years ago.

We are much further down Hayek’s “road to serfdom” than ever before.

Nihilism and Socialism

At the highest level of abstraction, the greatest existential threat to the United States is a philosophic virus of the mind. Specifically, the two greatest threats to the United States are nihilism and socialism, which, as actionable ideologies, are working in tandem to destroy Western Civilization.

Socialism is the end, and nihilism is the means.

What do I mean by that? How has our present condition come to be, and how does it work in practice?

In the 1960s, the New Left abandoned Marx’s idea of a convulsive proletarian revolution because the working class was inherently conservative. The new revolutionary strategy was for the intellectual and cultural elite to engage in a long march through America’s cultural institutions. The nihilistic goal was to undermine all the values and virtues of America and Western civilization. America’s cultural Left attacked reason, truth, objectivity, free will, rights, individualism, freedom, constitutionalism, and capitalism.

Since the 1960s, the Cultural Left has successfully infiltrated and commandeered the universities, the K-12 school system, the churches and synagogues, the media, Hollywood, major philanthropic institutions, virtually all professional organizations, social media, corporate America, etc. Things are so bad that the Cultural Left even controls the NFL and ESPN!

This postmodern Left controls virtually every opinion-forming institution in the country today. Even the family has been gutted and transformed. Parents no longer have a right to know, for instance, if the government schools are socially transitioning their children in preparation for the medical transitioning of their children.

Let me sum up our situation in the starkest terms possible: What kind of society sanctions the drugging and mutilation its children?

Let that sink in for a moment!!!

This is the victory of nihilism. Destroy capitalism’s underlying civic culture, and you destroy capitalism. Socialism is what follows.

But the situation is much worse than this because the Left has also captured the Federal and state bureaucracies (as well as NGOs) to affect every aspect of our lives. The result has been the merging of nihilism and socialism with what we call the Deep State, which is an entirely legitimate concept. In fact, I would like to suggest that the Deep State is much deeper and broader than most people realize.

The Deep State

By the Deep State, I mean more than what academics refer to as the “Administrative State” or the fourth branch of the federal government. We know, for instance, that the Administrative Deep State works closely with mission-aligned NGOs, the media, high-tech and social-media companies, white collar unions, etc.

So, as we enter 2025, here’s the State of our Union a few days before we inaugurate a new President and a new administration. More precisely, here is the state of the Deep State. (The following list does not cover the full range of the Deep State, nor does it describe the size or personnel that make up each component part of the Deep State. I will leave for another day. Instead, I focus on the effects of the various component parts of the Deep State on the American people.)

First, there is the Regulatory Deep State, which is sapping the energy and creativity out of American entrepreneurship and business.

Second, there is the Welfare Deep State, which has created a nation of dependents and destroyed the family in many communities.

Third, there is the Tax & Spend Deep State, which has left America $36 Trillion in debt, and which will enslave our children and grandchildren to our profligacy.

Fourth, there is the Inflationary Deep State, which is printing money and reducing the purchasing power of ordinary Americans to buy food, clothes, and homes.

Fifth, there is the Election Deep State, which has actively engaged in election interference.

Sixth, there is the Foreign Policy Deep State, which is more concerned with exporting America’s LGBTQ+ agenda to the Third World than it is with keeping America safe.

Seventh, there is the Military Deep State, which keeps America in endless wars that it keeps losing.

Eighth, there is the Treason Deep State, which has been transferring American technology to the Chinese Communist Party for decades.

Ninth, there is there is the K-12 Education Deep State, which literally now teaches America’s children that 2 + 2 = 5 and that America is systemically racist.

Tenth, there is the Higher-Education Deep State, which often resembles mass Maoist struggle sessions that indoctrinate and censor.

Eleventh, there is a Corporate Deep State, which believes that trans-marketed beer is more important than shareholder profits.

Twelfth, there is an Entertainment Deep State, which produces movies and music that cater to kiddy sexuality and that idolize drug-ridden guttersnipes.

Thirteenth, there is the Media Deep State, which is—obviously—the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

Fourteenth, there is the Social-Media Deep State, which takes its censoring orders from the federal government, and which has jiggered its algorithms to addict and infantilize our children via an endless stream of concrete-bound images and “likes.”

Fifteenth, there is the Medical Deep State, which, in cahoots with government officials bans certain drugs, promotes others, says that it’s normal and good to drug and mutilate our children.

Sixteenth, there is the Lawfare Deep State, which, following government directives, has politicized and weaponized the legal system and abandoned the rule of law for the rule of men.

Seventeenth, there is the Surveillance Deep State, which is run by the NSA, CIA, and FBI to surveil without warrant the communications and financial transactions of ordinary Americans.

Eighteenth, there is the Climate Deep State, which seeks to eliminate fossil fuels and reverse engineer the industrial revolution.

Nineteenth, there is COVID Deep State, which locked down American economic and social life for 18 months.

Twentieth, there is the Administrative Deep State, which just got a whole lot deeper when President Biden issued an executive order last year making it near impossible to fire federal bureaucrats, thereby institutionalizing the Administrative Deep State in-perpetuity.

To repeat, the Deep State is much deeper than you realize.

Did you know, for instance, that for every law passed by Congress, the Deep State issues an average of 19 rules and regulations that often have the effect of broadening and deepening and even changing the law well beyond its original intention. Congress passed 175 new laws last year, which the Swamp converted into 3,248 new rules and regulations.

Moreover, according to a recent survey of Federal Government Managers by RMG Research, forty-two percent of bureaucrats in the DC Swamp are planning to actively oppose the incoming president from within by refusing to implement policies they disagree with or by subverting lawful orders. Seventy-three percent of Democrat bureaucrats plan to “somewhat resist” or “strong resist” the new administration. Sixty-four percent of unelected Democrat Federal Government Managers said they plan to ignore the orders of the new administration and instead do what they think best.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Every one of these Deep State functions shares two things in common with the others: each works to serve the interests of government, and they all share a common ideology.

Nihilism + Socialism + Deep State = Decline and Fall

So, to what does all this add up? It means that the nihilistic-socialist Deep State is hardwired into America’s political and civic institutions.

But our job today is not simply to describe the State of the Union in 2025 but to prognosticate and project into the future what America will look like in 2050 and into the 22^nd century.

If . . . if what I have said thus far is true, or even partially true, you might imagine three possible futures for America.

First, you might worry that America is committing cultural suicide. This was certainly the explicit goal of the New Left’s long march through the institutions. At the deepest philosophic-cultural level, you know you’re in deep trouble when the cultural elites proclaim that we live in a post-truth society.

Second, you might worry that America is living through a period of what Alexis de Tocqueville called “soft despotism,” which is surely just a transition stage to something much worse—namely, “hard” despotism or even totalitarianism.

Third, you might worry that America is headed toward a civil war, which many people are now either predicting or calling for. A couple of years ago, I started noticing a plethora of articles in the mainstream media with titles such as “America’s Coming Civil War”!

You might think that reports of America’s coming suicide, coming totalitarianism, or coming civil war are exaggerated, but there are real signs that 2020s America is experiencing elements of all three, which means that we are entering our Weimar phase exactly 100 years after the German version.

All of this may seem like hyperbole to you, but our job today is to project where we’re headed and to come up with solutions to our various maladies.

Postmodern Left vs. Post Modern Right: what do they share in common?

Everything that I have been describing to this point is the result of what we might call Cultural Marxism or the postmodern Left. But civil war—if that’s what’s in the offing—requires two opposing sides.

So, who is on the other side of America’s Weimar-esque culture war?

In Weimar Germany, street battles were fought by two sides of the same coin: the international and national socialists. Weimar communists and Nazis shared socialism in common.

In the United States today, the battle is being fought between what we might call the postmodern Left and the postmodern Right (or what I have called the Reactionary or Nietzschean Right).

America’s postmodern Left and postmodern Right share one thing in common: hatred of America, by which I mean a hatred of the core principles and institutions associated with the American Founding, namely, nature, reason, truth, objectivity, individualism, free will, natural rights, merit, virtue, limited government, rule of law, constitutionalism, and laissez-faire capitalism.

What exactly is the Reactionary Right, who are its members, and where did they come from?

America’s Nietzschean Right is a neo-fascist, youth movement consisting largely of young men between the ages of 18 and 35. I can tell you that the fastest growing ideological movement on the so-called “Right” today is not conservatism, libertarianism, classical liberalism, or Objectivism. It’s the followers of the pseudonymously-named “Bronze Age Pervert,” whose facile philosophy can be summed up in a few general ideas: the will to power, authoritarianism, one-man rule, and rabid nationalism.

Here's an interesting sociological fact. Most young people who have joined the Reactionary Right were once conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals. Many of them interned or worked at the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, and other pro-liberty organizations.

But we lost them. We have lost a generation of young men who think the Liberty-Movement Establishment has become feckless and abandoned them. The problem is, of course, that they have a point!

You might ask, then: how did this happen?

The Washington think-tank world was created in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s to fight socialism. It was not created and is not prepared to fight nihilism, which is what our young people mostly experience today.

If you’ve been told every single day from the moment you started kindergarten until you graduated from college that you’re racist, sexist, and homophobic by virtue of the fact that you’re white, male and heterosexual, and, you are not being defended by the Liberty-Movement, should we be surprised that these young men are siding with those who are fighting the postmodern Left on its chosen battlefield?

What this also means is that America’s young people of all political persuasions are abandoning if not rejecting the philosophy of Americanism. America’s young people on the postmodern Left and Right are united in their hatred of the United States and its founding principles.

And let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, a nation that hates itself cannot stand!!!

The time has come for the adults in the room to restore the Liberty Movement to liberty. We must do something about this, and we must do it now.

A New Birth of Freedom?

I’d like to end on a more optimistic note. I conclude with my introduction: “Situation hopeless, not yet bad.” If you think about it, this old saw was not a lament but a proclamation of hope.

The promise of American life has always been hope—hope that tomorrow will be better than today. And so, we must fight for liberty and a free society, and we must fight to give our children and grandchildren the future that was once ours.

So, where do we look for hope in twenty-first century America? Here are two places where we are actually winning the culture war.

First, the single most important social movement of the twenty-first century is the education revolution that is occurring in this country via homeschooling, and the leaders of this revolution are America’s homeschooling mothers. We must do everything in our power to protect homeschooling from the Education Establishment and the attempts of meddling state legislators to regulate if not to ban homeschooling.

Second, we must reinvent higher education. Allow me to give you one concrete example of an academic program that has the potential to change higher education. At Clemson University, I have created the Lyceum Scholars Program, which is a model for the future. The Lyceum Program uses a “Great Books” approach to studying the history of liberty, capitalism, the American Founding, and the principles of moral character. We assign to each of our students what we call a “Socratic Tutor,” who meets with his or her tutees every other week to discuss questions of moral character. There is no other program in America like it.

Let me conclude by saying to all of you here today: this is our time. But time is running out. We must reverse engineer our current journey down the road to serfdom. It is our moral responsibility—here, now, today—to dedicate our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to the cause of liberty.

Will you join us?

My newest book . . .

My best book . . .