A green & pleasant Land
Reading, Watching 05.31.26
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When the Clock Broke is now out in paperback and available wherever books are sold. If you live in the United Kingdom, it’s also available there. The UK edition is also apparently available all over the world, too! I’ve received reports now of book sightings in places as far as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Christchurch, New Zealand. It seems relatively easy to find in Commonwealth countries and at English-language bookstores abroad.
I also do a film podcast with Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times. On our Patreon, we have a lot of bonus content, including a weekly politics discussion.
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
—William Blake, from the preface to Milton: a Poem
I write to you from Cambridge, England, where I’m set to be a part of a conference put on by the history department on Trump and Trumpism. I arrived a few days early to catch the “The United States of America at 250” event, which was largely dedicated to discussions about the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. The last panel, featuring my friend Jamelle Bouie, was entitled “Does the Declaration of Independence still matter?” I’m not sure how I would answer that, honestly. As I watch the debacle around America’s 250th Anniversary celebrations unfold in the States, the answer seems simultaneously to be “not at all” and “very much so” — no one seems to care about it anymore, but it seems urgent. Particularly that second paragraph, which begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
I’ve written in the past about this regime’s ideological assault on the Declaration, including Vance’s “Anti-Declaration” and Eric Schmitt’s National Conservatism conference speech. During the discussions, I couldn’t help but think of M.E. Bradford, the Southern Agrarian reactionary who inspired the paleoconservatives, and his take on Jefferson’s document in his 1976 Modern Age essay “The Heresy of Equality”, published the year of the nation’s bicentennial. Bradford was responding to Harry Jaffa’s essay “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” which argued for Abraham Lincoln’s interpretation of the Declaration and that equality of natural rights was the basis of government by consent of the governed. For Bradford, this was all Yankee and Puritanical nonsense, promulgated by dictatorial fiat by the “Caesar” Lincoln. I quote from my own book:
