Why I rejected Caesarism on the American right

revisiting a letter to the chairman of the Claremont Institute

It is the day before the 2024 election. I am in Washington, DC. Autumnal bliss is everywhere: orange leaves, blue sky, terry sweatshirts.

I have no idea what will happen tomorrow. I already voted by mail, coloring the circle marked “Harris.” And now, I am lying on the grass, staring at the trees, and reflecting on a past letter.

It is a letter I wrote to Tom Klingenstein in the summer of 2022. Tom is the chairman and primary financial backer of the Claremont Institute. For those not familiar, the Claremont Institute has been the leading intellectual center of gravity behind Trumpism. John Eastman, the lawyer who advised Trump on overturning the 2020 election, worked there. He still does.

I’ve decided to share it because it shows some of the intellectual crosscurrents behind today’s political moment. It shows the deepest root of my break from Trump: a refusal to cross the rubicon into Caesarism.

I have already turned the page on my Trump past. Hopefully tomorrow we will do so as a nation. If you are still undecided, here is my endorsement of Harris.

The letter is below, lightly edited with key parts in bold.

Tom, if you’re reading this, I’m still here to talk.

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July 31, 2022

Dear Tom,

I don’t know how to say this gently, so I will be direct. I am concerned that you and the Claremont Institute are moving in a dangerous direction. I believe it is a direction that may harm your own objective of preserving the American way of life.

From our interactions, you have always struck me as kind, courageous, and open-minded. I admire your ability to conceptualize and frame ideas.

But I see blind spots. Your videos about “Trump virtues” and “America’s cold civil war” come across as tone deaf and unwise in the wake of January 6th. Your warfare rhetoric fosters an ends-justify-means mentality that can give rise to dangerous behaviors. Your indulgence of rhetoric about “the regime” and “our masters” and “the elites” feeds into a situation analysis that is demoralizing, cartoonish, and overstated.

Rather than moving us away from civil war, I fear some of your efforts are moving us closer to it. Rather than re-grounding us in the Constitution, I fear some of your efforts are laying groundwork that will move us away from it.

Where is the self-examination after one of your fellows pushed extra-Constitutional measures that Trump acted upon? Where is the dialogue about guardrails and moral limits in the quest for a more muscular American Right? Where is the insistence on respecting the peaceful transfer of power?

Maybe you are already discussing topics like these. If so, that’s great. But from the outside, it looks like you are doubling down on the next phase of Trump and Trumpism. This strikes me as bad moral judgment and a strategic mistake.

We must confront the truth that Trump led a coordinated effort to interfere in the electoral process. In my eyes, it was a coup attempt. I understand some will disagree with the “coup” word, but that is my assessment after following the evidence.

Funnily enough, I came to this view in part because of my experience in a Claremont Institute event. I’m referring to the election wargame Claremont conducted with the Texas Public Policy Institute a couple months before the 2020 election. My role was to play the intelligence community. Putting myself in those shoes made me realize just how sensitive the presidential transfer of power is from a national security standpoint. That take-away stayed with me, as I watched January 6th from afar and tried to understand what happened.

Another experience that shifted my perspective was writing a draft novel set in Boston in the late 1760s, just before the American Revolution. It was about an apprentice at the Boston Gazette who got swept up in the Sons of Liberty movement. I was curious how people went from regarding themselves as British-American citizens to American revolutionaries.

Putting myself in those shoes gave me empathy for the emotional experience of insurrectionism, but it also made me wary of it. It changed the way I viewed the Trumpified GOP. I realized it had become not-quite-consciously revolutionary. I saw insurrectionist rhetoric everywhere I looked, and Covid lockdowns took it to new heights. I dug deep asking myself if the extra-Constitutional logic I was seeing was justified. I concluded that no, it is not. I want to make America great through the democratic process, not authoritarian revolt.

In your recent article about a DeSantis fundraising appeal, you wrote that the great fault line within the Republican party is between “those who believe we are in a (cold civil) war, fighting for our lives, and those who do not.” This may be true, but I want to offer some other fault lines that have emerged on the American Right.

Perhaps the most significant one is between those who believe American democracy is too far gone to be saved versus those who do not. Here’s an example of this view from Mike Anton’s latest article:

How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ? Why would we want to?

Mike doesn’t explicitly say he has given up on American democracy, but the feeling is there. And I understand the frustration. I am sympathetic to it, though ultimately disagree.

Losing faith in American democracy begs the question of what to do about it. And here is where another fault line is emerging. There are responses that are within the bounds of Constitutional safeguards and responses that are not within those bounds. Building a parallel economy, promoting localism, or exiting the country altogether, for example, are reasonable alternatives for people who are blackpilled on American politics. Those are within bounds. Caesarism, secession, and civil war are not.

Promoting Trump 2024 strikes me as an implicit embrace of Caesarism logic. Downplaying and dismissing January 6th hits me the same way. Supporting DeSantis without addressing these issues does not entirely eradicate the issue either, in my opinion.

Personally, I believe America is too great to give up on. I believe we should seek to reform and advance America through the democratic process, even if it’s a long shot. Many things are good about America. We should be wary of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I do have my moments of doubt and frustration. I too have walked to the Rubicon and peered into the abyss. But then I decided: no.

Thus, my intent with this letter is not to clutch pearls or to be derisive. And I’m not suggesting you become overly censorious either. Indeed, one of the things I respect about the culture of the Claremont Institute is its tolerance for internal dissent and debate.

My recommendation is that you reflect on these issues and bring some consciousness to them. Think about your intellectual and institutional guardrails. Consider that you might be getting some things wrong, or that some of your ideas may have unintended consequences.

I don’t want you to look back on this period and realize that you summoned forces that were counter to your objectives. I know you love America, and I know your heart is in the right place.

I hope you see that I am writing this from a place of good intent. I am here if you want to talk through any of these issues.

Sincerely,
Jeff Giesea

Related links:

• Washington Post article on the Claremont Institute

• The report from the Claremont-TPP election exercise

• My first essay publicly breaking from Trump, “Why the American Right should break from Trump and Trumpism”

• My Harris endorsement

• “Letter to myself in 2015”