Our enemies on Calhoun:
https://www.amren.com/features/2022/07/americas-greatest-political-thinker-since-the-founders/Calhoun wrote:
I only know of one principle to make a nation great, and that is, to protect every citizen in the lawful pursuit of his business. He will then feel that he is backed by the government, that its arm is his arms, and will rejoice in its increased strength and prosperity. Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the road that all great nations have trod.(94)
OK, but who is "every citizen"? Certainly not everyone who wants to be a citizen:
Calhoun’s doctrine does not serve everyone. Richard Hofstadter had reason to call him the “Marx of the master class.” Progressives would say his views bias the state in favor of property holders and current citizens. It means that non-citizens, those outside the state (Indian tribes), and those not represented by the system have no stake in the Republic. In Calhoun’s time, it also meant that the United States defended slaveholders and their property, putting slaves and even abolitionists outside the polity. (We should remember that Virginia executed John Brown for treason against the Commonwealth, not just for murder.)
"Every citizen" = those in the ingroup only
See also:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/leftist-vs-rightist-moral-circles/Continuing:
Calhoun took for granted that the expansion of American civilization meant displacing Indian tribes, and saw no contradiction between this and republicanism.
In fact, Calhoun was the one practicing tribalism. And yes, I agree there is no contradiction between tribalism and republicanism; the latter is indeed one way to efficiently organize the former. If anything, it is absolute monarchism which is more risky for tribalism, because then all it takes is an anti-tribalist monarch to put an end to it. Imagine if John Brown were absolute monarch of America! It is to prevent such a possibility that tribalists feel safer with republican separation of powers across multiple branches of government that function to restrain one another.
Calhoun’s second main argument is that America’s racially discriminatory policies, including slavery, unify white citizens, protect democracy, and mitigate class differences.
I agree with Calhoun. This is why True Leftists cannot be democrats.
Calhoun also understood that a common economic and political interest in slavery made a broad commitment to white democracy possible in South Carolina.
This is what actual democracy was intended to be about: political decisions being made by the will of
the majority of the demos, which is "white"-only. This maximizes the chances that the decisions are made with "white" tribal interests in mind.
He also understood a defensive stance in politics is always doomed. Thus, he defended slavery as a “positive good,”
Then why not put "whites" into slavery also? (Of course we know what Calhoun really means: slavery is a positive good for those who are not slaves.)
Calhoun argued that slavery also promoted social peace and served white workers’ interests.
See?
In response to the slogan “no one is free unless all are free,” Calhoun might respond that no one has ever been free unless others were subjugated.
Calhoun's notion of freedom is the standard "white" notion of "freedom". They have to be actively oppressing others just to feel neutral.
(If there was only one person in existence, then no one is subjugated, so is that person "unfree"? Perhaps Yahweh created the material world because Yahweh himself thinks like Calhoun and hence felt "unfree" with no one to subjugate?)
Slavery promoted republicanism by giving poor whites a stake in the system, rich whites a reason to care about poor whites, and both a reason to defend the government.
I agree completely. This is why I hate slavery: it is sustainable evil.
“Are we to associate with ourselves, as equals, companions and fellow-citizens, the Indian and mixed races of Mexico?” he asked. “I would consider such association as degrading ourselves and fatal to our institution.”
I agree that it would be fatal to Western institutions, which only proves such institutions should never have existed in the first place.
He [Calhoun] could support taking Oregon, California, and New Mexico on the assumption that they would one day be filled with white people, and thus could be incorporated into the United States, even if they might be free states. But the United States could not conquer and incorporate a nation of nonwhite people without destroying its form of government
Based on its tribalist motivations, this form of government surely deserves to be destroyed.
Calhoun warned Americans that “[liberty] is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike — a reward for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving — and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or enjoying it.”
In short, Calhoun views slave owners as "the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving", and abolitionists as "ignorant, degraded and vicious".