In my spare time last week, I did a bit of searching around on WordPress to see if there were any other WordPress Blogs worth mentioning here on The Fourth Estate. Of the various Blogs that I read online, I came across The Scholar’s Stage. Hosted by somebody named Tanner Greer, it is the Blog of another political scientist with an interest in Southeast Asian history and philosophy. He has spent a decent portion of his professional life in Asia, from teaching English to the children of Chinese billionaires to consulting government and private interests in that part of the world. His Blog has expanded over the years to include a message board and podcast.
However, access to the message board is off limits to regular visitors to the site. Apparently, one has to become a patron on his Patreon account first. Even so, after reading some of the posts that he had written in the past few years, I can tell that Greer’s core interests are in the diplomatic relations between Mainland China and Taiwan. He does delve into topics outside of the realm of Southeast Asia, occasionally discussing about American politics, political theories and strategic thoughts informed by advancements in Psychology.
From my understanding, Greer is best understood as someone who is somewhat critical to the pro-Hamiltonian reorientation that has been occurring within the American Right and American Left in recent years. He argues that the Classical Liberalism (Read: Libertarianism) plaguing the American Right will always continue to exist because that ideology is hardwired into the American Way of Life. America, he insisted, was founded by the English and Scots-Irish Protestants whose Weltanschauung resonates with Liberal Capitalist Parliamentary Democracy. One cannot speak of America as anything else except as a Liberal Capitalist Parliamentary Democracy.
This is made especially apparent in his posts criticizing the Hamiltonian reorientation within the American Right and American Left. Even though he focuses much of his attention on the Right-Hamiltonians, he nevertheless acknowledges that there are Left-Hamiltonians. He believed that the Right-Hamiltonians, if given the chance to take power in Washington, will only benefit Americans in the New England, Midatlantic, and Great Lakes States. He claimed that the Hamiltonians do not the embody the Germanic and European Catholics of those States but the “Puritans” of New England. Granted, not everyone on the American Right agrees with that statement, and some of the responses in the comments sections for those relevant posts suggested as much.
The position of The Fourth Estate, meanwhile, is that the “collectivist and social justice ethos” cannot entirely be attributed to America’s English Protestants, at least not in the centuries since the mid-19th century. It is true that the Puritans and the Federalist Party were the foremost proponents of that ethos at a time when America was evenly split between British and German Protestants. But it would be disservice to the later contributions of Germanic and European Catholics in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Even so, he went on to argue that if Right-Hamiltonians and Left-Hamiltonians are going to become a relevant political force in American life, they need to appeal to the Americans who are not from the New England, Midatlantic, and Great Lakes States, the majority of whom are not have Germanic or European legacies to draw from. It means realizing that while the rest of America may be critical of “Big Government,” they are also critical of “Big Business” as well. And while there are a lot of things that I do not necessarily agree with Greer’s analysis, but even I know when to take constructive criticism.
Categories: Politics
The Fourth Estate 
Leave a Reply