Proceduralism and the Idolatry of Institutions
Are We Ready to Do What Is Necessary to Save Our Country?
One of the most withering problems afflicting political conservatism today is what I would describe as the conservative fetish for proceduralism – or what I might also call the idolatry of the institutions. To put it simply, a large swath of the conservative establishment, GOP, think tanks, and intellectuals are uncomfortable with too much ‘breaking stuff’ and uneasy with anything that smacks of revolution. In the popular language of the Internet, these are “cuck-servatives” – claiming to be conservative, but so devoted to procedures and institutions that they are willing to let the country burn rather than take any out-of-the-ordinary measures to save her.[1. “Cuck-servative” (according to X account Xenocosmography on December 22, 2024): “A conservative lost enough to be positively proud their leftist opponents aren’t in jail (let alone executed or deported). Cuckservative mantra: ‘Better to lose than be beastly to the enemy.’ John McCain was perhaps the ideal type” (https://x.com/xenocosmography/status/1871019963223511481).] They are content if the ends of government fail, provided we do not violate the procedural means along the way.
Mining the psychology of this camp remains confounding to me: are they simply so ‘principled’ that they have become useless for any earthly good? Or are they just so naively and foolishly afraid to take any serious measures because of their fears of reprisal (“What if the Left did that to us?”) – all the while failing to observe, of course, that for whatever boogeyman the squishy conservatives can conjure up that the Left might do to them, the actual Leftist agents are already three steps ahead of them and likely are already doing that and more.
President Trump is a touchstone for this reaction because he makes many uncomfortable (not only the ‘Never Trumpers’, but even many who reluctantly voted for him) by his unconventional approach to politics and refusal to play by established rules. What is more, he uses revolutionary language, openly accusing the Left of lies, crimes, injustice, and treason against the American citizens.[2. It is not surprising that Democrats treat Trump like he is beyond the acceptable contours of American politics, but it is confounding when alleged conservatives believe this. It makes them sound remarkably like … Barack Hussein Obama. Obama in an exemplary manner captured his own disdain for Trump in a 2016 ABC pre-election interview where he said: “(There) is something qualitatively different about the way Trump has operated in the political sphere. I ran against John McCain. I ran against Mitt Romney … they’re both honorable men. And if they had won, then I wouldn’t worry about the general course of this country. I think Republicans and Democrats have some fierce disagreements, and that’s how democracy works. We’re a big diverse country, and sometimes it’s going to be contentious and noisy. But what we haven’t seen before, I think, is somebody (Trump) questioning the integrity of elections and the will of the people … And if you are willing to say anything and do anything, even when it undermines everything that’s been built by previous generations, then that’s a problem – and that’s why I take this election very seriously.” (Watch the clip here: https://x.com/JohnMcCloy/status/1947704400220225579). This was Obama telling the public his justification for everything he and his agents would instigate in the Russiagate hoax (coup) going forward. Trump was simply outside the pale of what the D.C. establishment, the elites, the bureaucracy, and the intelligence agencies could countenance; thus he had to be thwarted by every means.]
He calls out the emperor’s new clothing of “our democracy”, suggesting that the regime we have been living under is fundamentally flawed and needs to be rebuilt. While the MAGA alliance has continued to grow and even includes many who were previously recalcitrant, the reactions surrounding Trump still prove just how many people are uncomfortable with his quasi-revolutionary project. To me, these reactions serve to highlight precisely the fetish of proceduralism.
Hesitations and Obstacles
The list of proceduralist hesitations or arguments against Trump’s attempted revitalization of America is endless. The GOP leaders of Congress have decided to adjourn in August and hold pro-forma sessions to prevent President Trump from pushing through any recess appointments. A vocal body of conservatives has criticized Trump over his tariffs either because they are free trade absolutists, or because they acknowledge that the Constitution entrusts the power to set tariff rates to Congress, not the executive. Some criticized Trump for bombing Iran without congressional authorization. There is the position that Trump’s investigation and prosecution of the Ivy League schools is dangerous because it looks like ‘viewpoint discrimination’ or coercion and partisanship. There is the assumption that every judicial obstruction of the Trump administration must be taken seriously because it’s the ‘rule of law’ and proceeds from the solemnity of the black-robed judicial office. There is the reluctance to face and address the real extent of censorship and surveillance. There is the laser-focus from some budget hawks on deficit spending and the need for a balanced budget, even at the expense of any other pressing necessities. And there is an unserious, superstitious attachment to the Senate filibuster rule, which is an arbitrary, outdated, and completely changeable procedure that effectively guarantees the impotency of our legislature to really legislate. The filibuster may have been fitting at a prior time in our country’s history, but it is unfitting now – and it is actually nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist, not to mention it holds back any real legislative reform that could come from Congress.
And pressed with mounting evidence of criminal corruption and abuse of power on the part of Obama, the Clintons, the Bidens, Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Fauci, and the rest of the deep state actors, many conservatives cringe at the possibility of prosecutions and accountability out of fear of future reprisal or fear of being charged with hypocrisy and double standards. Never mind that Obama and his agents spent years illegally and unjustly colluding against Trump to undermine the 2016 election and his presidency. And never mind that the Biden DOJ spent years prosecuting Trump, his supporters, and other peaceful conservatives. There is the unwillingness from many conservatives to have any real prosecutions of corrupt Democrats in government because they want to seem non-partisan and don’t want to be accused of going after political opponents.
For many of these proceduralists, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they want to save the country and restore some kind of constitutional government, but they imagine that this can come about if they just publish a few more think tank reports, host a few more Congressional hearings, write a few more op-eds, and hopefully win a few more elections. They want to win by the tried-and-true rule book of procedures that ought to govern activity in a democratic republic. They don’t want to break the institutions or break the rules. By “rules” that they don’t wish to break, I mean whatever legal and procedural customs are dominant at the time; not everything “legal” is constitutional, nor just. Thus, my charge is that they have an idolatry of the institutions and procedures.
Assessing the Truth
The institutions and procedures can be deceiving because of their long establishment and sometimes storied prestige; they wear an aura of gravitas. Yet this can mask the real (often ugly) truth, and many conservatives are deceived due to their naivete or due to their unwillingness to acknowledge the real state of affairs.
The proceduralists err by not facing the truth of what real political change would look like: regaining control of the institutions and remaking them, or simply tearing down old institutions and rebuilding better ones. Real political change for the better would necessitate reconstructing the political procedures to guarantee that the ends of government do not fail for American citizens.
No stable, lasting regime can endure the bipolar swings our regime has witnessed politically, culturally, and morally over the last few decades. A country cannot endure when every four years, there is political whiplash between opposite poles on questions as fundamental as morality and citizenship. Jefferson famously said in the rhetorical flourish of his First Inaugural Address (1801) that “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”[3. Thomas Jefferson, 1801 First Inaugural Address, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau1.asp.] While this may have been true in Jefferson’s day and we all aspire to live in such an America, it is undeniable that many of our current differences are indeed differences of principle. Whether or not to kill infants, whether or not to perform transgender procedures on minors, whether or not to prosecute crime and punish criminals – these are differences of fundamental, regime-level principles. A political regime cannot encompass too much diversity on these questions without breaking down or descending into anarchy. There are certain questions on which we must all agree (or at least a significant majority agree) in order for us to have a stable country.
The fact that we have these bipolar political and moral swings is proof that our regime is in a critical condition. As Lincoln famously said in 1858: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free … I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”[4. Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858 “House Divided” Speech, https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/housedivided.htm.] To apply Lincoln’s insight to our current situation, I do not believe our regime can endure this way forever. Something will have to change, someone will have to win – which means someone will have to lose. And I have no qualms declaring that the Left’s control over our government and institutions needs to be destroyed and permanently dethroned. After all, to paraphrase the great political philosopher Billy Joel, “We didn’t start the fire!” We who want a society governed by the natural law and the principles of ordered liberty did not initiate war on the Left; they declared war on our country and have sought to distort and dismantle it for their evil ends. We fight to defend something that is good and prior.
I distinguish that there are some regime-level questions, while others are merely procedural questions that can be addressed within an established regime. Regime-level questions answer the ends of government: What is the nature of man? What are natural rights? Who is a citizen? What rights should the government preserve? What system of morality ought the government to inculcate? What is the religious character of the citizenry? And so on.
In comparison, procedural questions address things like: what are legal jurisdictions, how to adjudicate property rights under the law, how laws should be passed, how to set and define the balances of power between distinct departments in the federal government or even between the federal government and the states, what tariff and tax rates should be, how to resolve conflicting legal claims, and so on. Procedures are vital to establish within a stable regime, and they should be objective, non-partisan, reliable, consistent, and able to be used as precedent. And these procedures usually involve establishing institutions like Congress, federal and state courts, government agencies, universities, public schools, and so on. Procedures and institutions are necessary for good government.
Procedures and Institutions Are Not Enough
However, proceduralism is a fetish when one latches onto following procedures at all costs, even as the regime has been changed, the nation is being lost, and the ends of government are being destroyed. The mere continued existence of institutions and procedures is not sufficient to save us, especially when those institutions and procedures have been hijacked to accomplish the malevolent intentions of Progressives, neo-Marxists, and sexual revolutionaries. This crisis is indeed our state of affairs, and we must acknowledge it. I would love to live in a country where Congress was a genuinely deliberative, legislative body that had substantive debates and then passed tax and tariff policies. But for many reasons, that is not the government under which we currently live.
As proof that institutions can be hijacked, look at the universities. For all their previous history and prestige, the modern Ivy League and state universities are bastions of the Left, which very effectively propagandize and indoctrinate. For all the concerns over government funding of religion, modern Left-wing universities look as much like public funding of the ‘secular religion’ as ever I have seen.
Or take free market capitalism. Free market capitalism is a set of procedures that allow rational men in a free society to engage in fair, productive exchanges of goods and services. Capitalism is the only economic arrangement suitable for men as rational agents, yet the procedures of capitalism do not ensure their own inviolate preservation. Capitalism can be hijacked and distorted when the government permits injustice or cronyism, or when public morals become degraded. For proof, look at the woke versions of DEI and ESG ‘capitalism’ that still dominate corporate sectors of the economy and even turn profits, but do it by embracing destructive ideologies and pandering to cronyism. Free market capitalism is a procedural system that requires moral men to operate, and it does not run automatically regardless of the ‘input’ or ‘content’ of the system. This is why the prevalent trend on the part of conservative think tanks and politicians to dodge “culture war” issues in favor of merely focusing on economic ones is a major misstep. We can correct economic issues within a moral regime, but our capitalist procedures will not save us if our regime has become morally corrupted.
Just as we found by our misguided adventurism in the Middle East over the last two decades, democracy cannot be “airdropped” if the culture, morals, and customs of the people are not fitted to it. But the same holds true in our own country: we cannot expect democracy to keep functioning automatically in the U.S. simply because the form of democratic government exists nominally – even while our literacy and civics education plummets, questionable election measures prevail (i.e., lax ID laws, electronic voting machines, mass mail-in ballots, ballot drop boxes, same-day voter registration, etc.), and millions of illegal immigrants occupy our country. Even if nominal “elections” continue to happen under this system, one cannot honestly contend that this is the republican government established by the American founders. Even third-world banana republics and narco-states have “elections”!
Nor are the Courts an inviolable institution when their DNA and makeup have been hijacked. Our judiciary is increasingly populated with Leftist judges – an increasing number foreign-born – who rely upon fake legal doctrines with no foundation in the Constitution and drastically distort it to serve their corrupt ends. This form of “living constitutionalism” proves that the institution of the judiciary can become so distorted as to be not an instrument of justice, but an obstacle to it. Notice that the claims of “rule of law” and “no one is above the law” rarely seem to stop the Left when they want to advance their agenda, but this concept does recuperate to obstruct a full-throated conservative agenda, as we see presently with the Trump administration.[5. I have written on the problem of the courts at greater length elsewhere. See Samuel Kimzey, “Conservatives Lose Even When SCOTUS Grants Them Wins”, The American Mind, June 24, 2025, https://americanmind.org/salvo/conservatives-lose-even-when-scotus-grants-them-wins/.]
Getting the Founders Right
While many conservative proceduralists like to invoke the legacy of the American founders, they can actually neglect the complete truth of the founding. The American founders themselves did not think that the democratic procedures they set up were foolproof. Jefferson in that same First Inaugural declared that “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression.”[6. Jefferson, 1801 First Inaugural Address.] Jefferson himself admits that majoritarian democracy can become a form of tyranny if the majority votes to do what is against the natural law, such as kill or enslave the innocent or corrupt justice.
In the Federalist 48, James Madison admitted candidly that the delineations of power in the Constitution between distinct departments of the government were “parchment barriers.”[7. Federalist 48. In The Federalist, edited by Jacob E. Cooke (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961).] Madison thought they had constructed the relations within the federal government and between the federal and state governments in the best way possible to prevent tyranny and serve the common good, but he did not think these were foolproof or infallible. Hamilton rightly expressed in Federalist 84 that the ultimate security of liberty and justice in a regime “must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government. And here, after all … must we seek for the only solid basis of all our rights.”[8. Federalist 84.] The founders themselves admitted that the citizens must maintain morality and vigilance in order for the nation to flourish in liberty and self-government. If the character of the people failed, there was no naïve hope that institutions and procedures alone would prevent tyranny or injustice.[9. For more on this consideration, see Casey Wheatland, “Founding Fathers and Red Caesar”, The American Mind, October 10, 2023, https://americanmind.org/salvo/founding-fathers-and-red-caesar/.]
Nor do many seriously consider the actions the American founders actually undertook. While strong conservatives when it came to human nature and moral beliefs, the founders adopted obviously revolutionary political measures. They started wars, wrote new political documents, founded new governments. These were not the actions of men enslaved to a fetish for procedures and institutions to the extent of crippling action and hampering the struggle for liberty and justice. The discomfort that many of today’s conservatives have for talk of insurrection or revolution ignores a real assessment of what their heroes did when they founded America. Many can point to the quotation that “prudence indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”, but we cannot ignore that this quotation occurs in the document by which the founders declared it their sovereign “right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”[10. Declaration of Independence.] The founders were willing to take drastic, unprecedented, and revolutionary measures to ensure the ends of government.
Similarly, many are fond of invoking Lincoln’s famous line that “ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets”.[11. Abraham Lincoln, July 4, 1861 Message to Congress in Special Session, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/july-4-1861-july-4th-message-congress.] Yet one cannot ignore that Lincoln was talking about a legitimately republican, constitutional government that was fighting to protect rights, not a corrupt, tyrannical government threatening natural rights. And one must also not neglect that Lincoln did go on to wage the bloodiest war in American history on behalf of the rights he sought to maintain against the Southern secessionists and slavocrats. Even Lincoln knew that “ballots” alone are not a magical cure to infallibly protect republican government and liberty.
Conservative Hegelians?
It seems to me that the proceduralists unwittingly assume that America and her political institutions are destined to last simply because they have lasted this long (at least in name). American exceptionalism can often assume a kind of infallibility to the American regime – that America cannot fail and will continue to evangelize the world as a city on a hill. But this is not guaranteed; the American founders did not think this, and nothing in sacred Christian revelation would support this. This unbounded optimism for the continuity of America is actually a page from the Progressive book, which sees history as a force unfolding upward toward greater and fuller manifestations of the world spirit, reason, justice, or whatever ideal one believes is guiding history. The great lie of the liberals and Progressives has been that everything in our country’s history (except the parts they selectively choose to excoriate) has been just one big Hegelian unfolding of the concept of democracy latent in the abstract ideals of “our democracy.” This denies that real, substantive change has occurred within American political institutions, laws, and culture (some for good, a lot for ill). Many changes have occurred in the American political regime that break with the past and would be unrecognizable and alien to the American founders. America has undergone a political and cultural change of DNA, even though the external forms of our Constitution are still standing.
This Hegelian understanding of history is intrinsically Progressive, and conservatives ought to eschew it, not embrace it by an idolatry of institutions and fetish for proceduralism, assuming that America and her political institutions are destined to last as long as we can keep certain forms and procedures in motion. We can cosplay that we’re a democracy, but if we have no borders, no fair elections, no deterrents against crime, and no morality, we can only delude ourselves so long.
Leaving aside the divine perspective of Providence, from our mortal vantage point, history is not predetermined. There is no Hegelian guarantee of progress, no thousand-year-Reich just around the corner, no guaranteed “Golden Age.” And yet, it is actually this fragility and contingency of the human sphere, the mortality of man and of every human endeavor, that makes our choices meaningful. It is reason and choice that elevate men above the beasts. As my colleague Josiah Lippincott explains:
“We are mortal. This is the tragedy of life—and of politics. No human work lasts forever. Given this fundamental limitation, we can either give up in despair or take a more hard-headed and rational view. We cannot do everything, but that does not mean we can do nothing. We can make real choices. We can make things that last, maybe not forever, but for a long time. We can plant trees whose shade will shelter our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. That is not nothing. Our work in this life matters. Therefore, it is in our interest to stay away from utopian scheming and paralyzing despair.”[12. Josiah Lippincott, “The Blessings of Neutrality”, June 27, 2025, https://lippincott.substack.com/p/the-blessing-of-neutrality.]
The temporal sphere of contingent affairs gives men the theater of action in which to develop virtue, pursue wisdom, and make choices that carry consequences. In addition to this philosophical perspective, Christian revelation shows us that our choices matter in light of eternity, with eternal rewards or punishments for our stewardship in this life. Accepting passively that American progress and security are guaranteed as long as we follow the procedures regardless of anything else is folly, and it ignores the possibilities to exercise statesmanship and try to save something of our country.
“We Have the Wolf By the Ears”
We are at a dangerous yet exciting moment in our country’s lifespan. This could be a point of resurgence and revitalization, or it could be the last bright moment before an even more frightening darkness descends. If we don’t succeed in saving something of our country, we will shortly have no recognizable country left to save. Writing in 1820 about the crisis of slavery and the Missouri Compromise, an elder Jefferson famously said: “[As] it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”[13. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html.] Our circumstances are different than Jefferson’s, but I think the warning is relevant. We have already seen the extent to which the Left went to silence dissent, dissolve law and order, and maintain their desperate grip on power over an ascendent Trump and his populist movement. The damnable Russiagate hoax, of which demonstrable evidence has been uncovered and publicized recently by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, is a prime exhibit of this. Including miraculously dodging an assassin’s bullet, President Trump managed to regain the White House against all odds, helped no doubt by the abysmal candidates (Biden and Harris) fielded by the Democrats.
Yet many overestimate Trump’s victory. The fight is far from over; the Leftist forces are still fighting the populist revolution with all they have, and the Left would not hesitate to permanently castrate the populist revolution if given the chance. Recalling the mass censorship and the weaponization of the justice system that occurred under the Obama and Biden administrations, it is not hard to imagine that, if the Left once got control of the presidency again, they would employ those same measures exponentially on steroids. This is why they fight so hard against Trump’s moves for full disclosure and accountability of deep state corruption. If the Left was aggressively totalitarian under Obama and Biden while much of their corruption was still hidden, how much more aggressive will they become now that Trump, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and others have daily exposed new and damning evidences of their widespread and deep corruption! It is a fight to the death, and the more damning the blows that befall them, the more desperate the Left will become. If we do not get control of our government – which includes the courts, the intelligence agencies, and the administrative bureaucracy – the Leftist resistance will obstruct and eventually destroy the populist revolution. Procedures and institutions will absolutely useless at that point.
If we focus on proceduralism above all else, we may feel a fake sense of moral superiority, but we will lose the country. It is not hard to imagine an imminent future scenario in which, in a few decades or a century or however long it takes, there is still a geographic entity labeled ‘U.S.A.’ on a map which remains nominally governed by the U.S. Constitution – but which is peopled by third-world migrants; vibrant Christianity is extinguished; drugs, crime, and corruption are rampant; government routinely rules by double standards; free speech has been swallowed up in censorship; sexual immorality and abortions are rampant and expected; genuinely substantive education has vanished; a Chinese-style surveillance state is in full-force; and a socialist-style government is headed by figures like AOC, Zohran Mamdani, Karen Bass, or Ilhan Omar. I can’t predict the future, but any or all of these specters are not hard to imagine emerging even within the span of a single lifetime. Our current trends forecast such destinations unless we change course drastically.
If a probable “black-pilled” response is to tell me that these things are already inevitably here, I won’t contradict the objection. But to the extent that these waves could still be resisted and maybe something salvaged out of the wreckage, I want to fight with everything I have in me. And if it all comes down in the end anyway, at least I want to go out with my boots on. The enduring reality of the “better country” (Heb. 11:16) and the “city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14) renders my choices in this fleeting temporal world not less but all the more significant. To the proceduralists who want to temper our spirits with undue tameness, I would respond with the words of the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (drafted by Jefferson for the Second Continental Congress): “We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary Slavery. Honour, Justice, and Humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that Freedom which we received from our gallant Ancestors, and which our innocent Posterity have a right to receive from us.”[14. 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_07-06-75.asp.]
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