The Unit­ed States of Con­cur­ren­cy

Repub­li­cans have a right to feel good about the 2024 elec­tions. Thanks to their “trifecta”—President Don­ald Trump and Repub­li­can majori­ties in both cham­bers of Congress—GOPers can put a stop to wok­e­ness as fed­er­al pol­i­cy, stack the judi­cia­ry with cadres, and start up ener­gy pro­duc­tion. They might even be able to bull-DOGE some spend­ing. 

Yet true con­ser­v­a­tives, mind­ful that we live in a fall­en world, should tem­per their opti­mism. Hav­ing been prop­er­ly taught to not put their trust in princes, we should be mind­ful that the princes we like could be replaced—will be replaced, soon­er or later—by princes we don’t like. That is, the day will come when Repub­li­cans are once again in the minor­i­ty. 

Thank­ful­ly, our con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem is replete with minor­i­ty rights. Here in the U.S., by design, win­ning isn’t every­thing and los­ing doesn’t leave the los­er with noth­ing. 

To know more, we might brush up on John C. Cal­houn. Why so? Because near­ly two cen­turies after his death, the South Car­oli­na statesman—he served as sec­re­tary of state, sec­re­tary of war, sen­a­tor, and vice president—still stands as a lead­ing the­o­reti­cian of minor­i­ty rights. 

More on Cal­houn and his mot­ley crew of intel­lec­tu­al fren­e­mies in a moment. But first, let’s con­sid­er the thin­ness of the Repub­li­can major­i­ty; or, if one prefers, the thick­ness of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic minor­i­ty. 

Trump won a high­er per­cent­age of the pop­u­lar vote this year than in either 2016 or 2020, and yet his per­cent­age is below 50; he edged out Kamala Har­ris by a mere point-and-a-half. (Yes, the Democ­rats do have a strange abil­i­ty to come up with new votes, even weeks after the vot­ing; look­ing ahead, this mys­te­ri­ous pow­er of theirs is yet anoth­er rea­son for GOP­ers not to get gid­dy.) 

Mean­while, Trump’s pop­u­lar-vote mar­gin ranks 44th of the 51 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions since 1824. MAGA can thank that wor­thy dinosaur, the elec­toral col­lege, for mak­ing their nation­al vic­to­ry loom larg­er.

As for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the lat­est num­bers sug­gest the GOP might have won only 220 seats—and so, tak­ing into account Trump-con­nect­ed vacan­cies, the House could be a tight-as-a-tick 217 to 215 for a few months. So if it were to hit some bad luck, Repub­li­cans could pos­si­bly find itself in the minor­i­ty before the 119th Con­gress is done. 

Inter­est­ing­ly, GOP House can­di­dates won their pop­u­lar vote by a mar­gin larg­er than Trump’s, a full three points. That the actu­al House-seat out­come proved to be so nar­row speaks to many fac­tors, includ­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic ger­ry­man­der­ing. 

Indeed, the Democ­rats haven’t gone any­where. Yes, they were shocked by the elec­tion results, but his­to­ry tells us that elec­tion losers become more ener­gized than win­ners; that’s why, in 18 of the last 20 midterm elec­tions, the “out” par­ty gained seats. 

In par­tic­u­lar, smart Democ­rats espy the sil­ver lin­ing of not hav­ing to defend a Har­ris-Walz admin­is­tra­tion for the next four years. After Harris’s bleary post-elec­tion video—wide­ly trashed, even by fel­low Democ­rats—ambi­tious Blues, eye­ing 2028, can see that the coast is clear. 

One of those like­ly ’28-ers, Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Gavin New­som, has already tak­en steps to bol­ster his oppo­si­tion­al cre­den­tials; he called a spe­cial ses­sion of his leg­is­la­ture to “Trump-proof” the Gold­en State. One of his mea­sures would estab­lish a state tax cred­it for elec­tric vehi­cles—not includ­ing Elon Musk’s Tes­la.

Mean­while, oth­er blue-state gov­er­nors, and blue attor­neys gen­er­al, are coor­di­nat­ing their own plans to, as it were, gov­ern from below. 

So when the Trumpy lead­er­ship of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment estab­lish­es a new pol­i­cy against trans­gen­derism, will blue states go along? Prob­a­bly not. To be sure, the issue of males in female sports was an over­all los­er for Democ­rats this year, but it’s not so clear that pol­i­cy will change in blue sanc­tums. 

Indeed, Delaware just elect­ed a trans­gen­der woman (that is, born a boy) to the U.S. House. Rep. Sarah McBride may not be wel­come in the Capi­tol ladies room, but it’s a safe bet that the the­atri­cal freshper­son will play Our Lady of Sor­rows at Demo­c­ra­t­ic ral­lies and fundraisers—and so stoke the faith­ful. 

Then there’s the relat­ed issue of DEI, which the Trump admin­is­tra­tion will dis­avow. But will Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors, may­ors, and oth­er exec­u­tives pay heed? Heck, will the fed­er­al deep state tru­ly obey? 

Speak­ing of #Resis­tance, what about the Trump/Miller/Homan plans for depor­ta­tion? May­ors of sanc­tu­ary cities, East, Mid­west, and West, are already declar­ing their oppo­si­tion. What will hap­pen if there’s a fed­er­al raid some­where and a may­or, or oth­er offi­cial, gets in the way, per­haps as a human shield? Will the feds arrest? Pros­e­cute? If so, where will they find a jury? 

And what if some­one gets hurt or killed? Where will the media be dur­ing these dra­mat­ic moments? Will the bil­lion-dol­lar law­fare-indus­tri­al-com­plex be far from the courtrooms—or the streets? 

On many oth­er issues—including, but hard­ly lim­it­ed to, abor­tion, med­ical mar­i­jua­na, and school choice—the dif­fer­ent branch­es and lev­els of gov­ern­ment seek to check and bal­ance (per­haps more like block and tack­le) each oth­er.

Out of all this ech­e­loned anti-Trumpery, new Demo­c­ra­t­ic stars will emerge. They might not be in the major­i­ty, but even in the minor­i­ty, they’ll have plen­ty of pow­er and make plen­ty of noise. 

So we come back to Cal­houn, who was, after all, a Demo­c­rat. To be sure, of a much dif­fer­ent kind than we see today, and yet in his devo­tion to minor­i­ty rights, he is strange­ly, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, au courant.

When Cal­houn wrote A Dis­qui­si­tion on Gov­ern­ment, pub­lished in 1851, the year after his death, he was think­ing most­ly of defend­ing the priv­i­leges of his own Dix­ie, which was shrink­ing rel­a­tive to the indus­tri­al­iz­ing North. Yet since Cal­houn wrote with eru­di­tion and sophistication—he earned two degrees from Yale, although his alma mater can­celed him in 2017—Dis­qui­si­tion is a work for all sea­sons. 

Cal­houn argued for a sharp dis­tinc­tion between a “numer­i­cal, or absolute major­i­ty,” and a “con­cur­rent, or con­sti­tu­tion­al major­i­ty.” The numer­i­cal major­i­ty is just what it sounds like: get­ting the most votes. But the con­cur­rent major­i­ty “regards inter­ests as well as num­bers.” Such con­cur­rence, Cal­houn argued, is right and prop­er because it pro­tects the minor­i­ty from being crushed by the major­i­ty. 

In fact, a con­cur­rent aware­ness of “inter­ests” as a cat­e­go­ry to be con­sid­ered along­side vote-totals is as Amer­i­can as apple pie. In Fed­er­al­ist No. 10, James Madi­son observed, “A land­ed inter­est, a man­u­fac­tur­ing inter­est, a mer­can­tile inter­est, a mon­eyed inter­est, with many less­er inter­ests, grow up of neces­si­ty in civ­i­lized nations, and divide them into dif­fer­ent class­es, actu­at­ed by dif­fer­ent sen­ti­ments and views.” Appro­pri­ate def­er­ence to these inter­ests, Madi­son con­clud­ed, was the only way to curb the “mis­chiefs of fac­tion.” 

So from the begin­ning of the repub­lic, a def­er­ence to interests—acknowledgment that some things are more impor­tant than numer­i­cal majorities—has been mar­bled through our insti­tu­tions. For instance, each state, regard­less of pop­u­la­tion, boasts two sen­a­tors. Then there’s the judi­cia­ry; thanks to Madis­on­ian think­ing, a few un-elect­ed judges became one of the three equal branch­es of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. 

The Bill of Rights is yet anoth­er form of con­cur­ren­cy. No mat­ter who wins the elec­tion, the rights of the peo­ple shall not be abridged, includ­ing those on the lone­ly minor­i­ty edge of free speech and free faith. 

Of course, we can’t hide from the fact that Cal­houn was a slave­hold­er (as was Madi­son), and that slav­ery was evil. Yet, unlike Madi­son, Cal­houn was an avowed cham­pi­on of slav­ery. So that makes it all the more inter­est­ing that so many fig­ures on the left have embraced Cal­houn­ian think­ing, even if not Cal­houn him­self. 

For instance, the bira­cial Lani Guinier, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School, long cham­pi­oned what she called a “minor­i­ty veto.” Back in 1993, Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton nom­i­nat­ed her to be his assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al for civ­il rights. And yet amidst the uproar over her views—which were deemed left-wing, but were, at the same time, neo-Calhounian—she was not con­firmed by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled Sen­ate. One might say that her con­cur­rent views were checked by anoth­er kind of con­cur­ren­cy, the Senate’s. 

In a sub­se­quent book, The Tyran­ny of the Major­i­ty: Fun­da­men­tal Fair­ness in Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Democ­ra­cy, Guinier quotes Madi­son, but nev­er men­tions Cal­houn. And yet she con­tin­ues to echo the Car­olin­ian, albeit think­ing of dif­fer­ent minori­ties, when she declares that minori­ties have “the right to fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” “a mean­ing­ful voice in gov­ern­ment.” Con­tin­u­ing in her uncred­it­ing reca­pit­u­la­tion of Cal­houn, she asserts that each group has a right to have its inter­ests rep­re­sent­ed, even if it’s in the minor­i­ty.

She cites approv­ing­ly Supreme Court Jus­tice Jus­tice Pot­ter Stew­art, who in 1964 wrote of “the strong­ly felt Amer­i­can tra­di­tion that the pub­lic inter­est is com­posed of many diverse inter­ests, [which] … in the long run … can bet­ter be expressed by a med­ley of com­po­nent voic­es than by the majority’s mono­lith­ic com­mand.” Guinier her­self added, “In that ‘strong­ly felt Amer­i­can tra­di­tion,’ I hope more of us come to reject the ‘mono­lith­ic com­mand’ of The Fixed Major­i­ty.” [Her cap­i­tal­iza­tions.]

Some­where, on the spec­tral side­lines of intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, Cal­houn is applaud­ing. After all, two cen­turies ear­li­er, he made much the same point when he extolled a pol­i­tics that weighs votes as much as counts them, “con­sid­er­ing the com­mu­ni­ty as made up of dif­fer­ent and con­flict­ing inter­ests, as far as the action of the gov­ern­ment is con­cerned; and takes the sense of each.”

The Cal­houn-Guinier par­al­lelism is so strong that Yale Law’s Stephen L. Carter allowed for the con­nec­tion in his fore­word to her book. Oth­er legal observers have been even blunter, e.g., “Strange Bed­fel­lows: The Polit­i­cal Thought of John C. Cal­houn and Lani Guinier.” 

So yes, all those Democrats—mayors, gov­er­nors, fil­i­buster-mind­ed senators—who look for­ward, from the minor­i­ty, to veto­ing Trump are fol­low­ing in the Cal­houn­ian tra­di­tion, even if they don’t know or don’t care.

For their part, con­ser­v­a­tives might think more, and bet­ter, of Cal­houn. He is, after all, fea­tured promi­nent­ly in Rus­sell Kirk’s 1953 clas­sic, The Con­ser­v­a­tive Mind; the author prais­es Calhoun’s “dis­taste for alter­ation; a deter­mi­na­tion to pre­serve an agri­cul­tur­al soci­ety; a love of local rights.” 

The Sage of Mecos­ta approv­ing­ly quotes Cal­houn: “Irre­spon­si­ble pow­er is incon­sis­tent with lib­er­ty, and must cor­rupt those who exer­cise it. On this great prin­ci­ple our polit­i­cal sys­tem rests.” Amid such think­ing, con­cur­ren­cy, which brakes pow­er, must have its place. 

So with Madi­son, Kirk, and Cal­houn in mind, con­ser­v­a­tives should prac­tice restraint, because, well, that’s what con­ser­v­a­tives are put on earth to do. Such restraint might mean for exam­ple, not seek­ing to use fed­er­al pow­er to chase down pro­gres­sivism even in its native blue dots. Squeez­ing too hard can cre­ate a sym­pa­thy vote, a back­lash, maybe even a coun­ter­stroke. 

To be sure, the exer­cise of restraint can’t guar­an­tee that the left will rec­i­p­ro­cate, but if there’s no restraint, we descend into Schmit­tian­ism.

Instead, if both sides rec­og­nize that one size does not fit all, over the long run, both sides will be hap­pi­er and the coun­try more har­mo­nious. 

For its part, MAGA has nev­er been known for its emo­tion­al or con­sti­tu­tion­al punc­til­ious­ness; yet prac­ti­cal his­to­ry, too, cau­tions pres­i­dents against over­reach. Joe Biden grabbed for too much in his one and only term, and many oth­er pres­i­dents came to grief in their sec­ond terms. 

So the wheel will turn. And when it does turn, the right will be glad if it nev­er sought to stamp out or purge vital Madisonian/Calhounian insti­tu­tions, most notably the U.S. Sen­ate. 

Today, some of the Trump­i­est of Trump sup­port­ers are say­ing that the Repub­li­can Sen­ate ought to fall into line with MAGA, includ­ing all its per­son­nel picks. Well, that’s not the way the Sen­ate is sup­posed to work, as attest­ed by the Constitution—or more recent­ly, by such more acces­si­ble works as John F. Kennedy’s Pro­files in Courage, James Burnham’s Con­gress and the Amer­i­can Tra­di­tion, and even Allen Drury’s Advise and Con­sent (which was made into a movie, for even more acces­si­bil­i­ty). 

All these works laud sen­a­tors for stand­ing on prin­ci­ple, embed­ding their stances in the meta prin­ci­ple of con­cur­ren­cy. Yes, con­cur­ren­cy is the under­ly­ing faith that institutions—competing with each other—should mat­ter more than pas­sions. And if the insti­tu­tions endure, so will the repub­lic. 

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