Who is Donald Trump, Really?

Who is Donald Trump, really? Damon Linker, writing in "The Week" makes the case that Trump is awful, but that styling opposition to him as a "resistance" and calling his Administration a "regime" is taking things too far. Commentators like Linker woefully underestimate the danger Trump represents to American democracy. Yes, some people go too far. Yes, we are not (yet) an autocracy and people can (still) voice opposition. But Trump is doing everything he can to weaken these restraints. He lies constantly, blurring the very idea of objective fact. He actively tries to discredit those who report fact, referring to the real press that reports on him accurately with the Stalinist phrase "enemy of the people" and dismissing their factual reporting with the epithet "fake news." Like autocrats everywhere he seeks to deny people an independent source of information from his unending torrent of lies. If he gets his way we will no longer be a democracy, but a tyranny. Jefferson understood the vital role of free and independent media when he wrote, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter." He understood that without an informed populace democracy cannot be sustained against the unchallenged propaganda of a despot.

Trump calls for physical violence against the press, dissenters, criminal suspects and those exercising their First Amendment rights. He publicly calls for America to disregard humanitarian provisions of the Geneva Convention which we ourselves introduced to the world. He publicly calls for his political rivals who have been convicted of no crimes (nor even charged) to be thrown in jail. He silences or fires anyone who reports on his corruption or calls out his lies, followed by streams of vicious slander against them. He violates the Constitution by subjecting asylum seekers to cruel and unusual punishment (caging, dividing families, considering people guilty before judgment) and by spending moneys (for his wall, for instance) that have been legally appropriated by Congress for other purposes. He has subverted the security of the United States for his personal, corrupt purposes by attempting to extort a vulnerable foreign ally at war by denying it congressionally appropriated moneys (another breach of the Constitution which requires the president to see that the laws are faithfully executed and of his oath of office to support that Constitution) to force it to concoct lies to help him in his re-election effort. He has threatened to unleash the military power of the US armed forces against the civilian population. He has repeatedly lied to and knowingly spread disinformation to the American people about a deadly pandemic, resulting in the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of people to serve his imagined political self-interest. He has obstructed justice in a serial manner to hide a full investigation of his wrongdoings.

There has never been a president like Trump. Linker is wrong to say the military leaders, by opposing him, are dangerously injecting politics into the civilian-military chain of command. They take an oath to the Constitution, not to one man, and when that man orders them to violate the Constitution they are oath-bound to resist, disobey, and call him out, as they have begun to do. He is the one injecting politics into the military, trying to make it a tool of his racial and political enforcement, and if they go along and follow such orders he will succeed. Linker is wrong, for the road we are on leads to dictatorship. There were several years during Hitler's rise when he hadn't destroyed the free press, he was only talking about it. He hadn't sent Jews to concentration camps, he was only talking about persecuting them. Hitler hadn't launched his war of conquest, he was only talking about how the French, Poles and Russians had to be annihilated to make way for the growing multitudes of Aryan Germans. Many believed he was only spreading such venomous hate and making such outlandish pronouncements to rile up the people and get into power, and then he would become responsible and act like a gentleman. It turned out he meant every word of them and tried to carry out his program just as he had promised. Sixty-five million people paid the price for naïveté like that, entire continents were devastated, and hundreds of millions were thrown into tyranny for decades thereafter as a direct result.

When a man in charge of a powerful country says predominantly brown and black people constitute the "shithole countries," that Nazis and Klansmen are "very fine people," that anyone reporting the facts is a national "enemy," that he believes the dictator of Russia over his own loyal American public servants, that maybe his supporters will insist he serve more than two terms, that police ought to be able to mistreat suspects, that he has the right to order unidentifiable secret police to attack American citizens on the street to clear a way for his photo op, that people of a certain religion cannot immigrate to this country, that the military should be used to unleash a bloodletting on American streets, and that the power of the state should be used to make it more difficult for certain people to vote, we ought to take him at his word. "Resistance" is exactly the way we need to define our approach to such a person, and "regime" is exactly the way we ought to understand what he is trying to institute here.

What Jesus Would Say to Paul Ryan

What are the ethical underpinnings of society? Are there moral principles which provide a guide for the objectives of public policy? How do the foundational standards of the Judeo-Christian world view, the starting point for any discussion of right and wrong in Western Civilization, guide our steps in meeting societal needs? These are big philosophical questions, and any political debate is conditioned by the moral perspectives of those involved. Since the object of politics is to accomplish good for the polity, what is done depends on what one considers good, and that depends on where one goes to find moral guidance.

Nicholas Kristof has written a column on the health care debate in the form of a parable. It expresses his idea of what Jesus would say to Paul Ryan. It expresses my own views as well. I invite you to read it for yourself and see what you think. Read it on this link.

  

Why Conservative Thinking Doesn’t Work: Part 1

     The historical record is quite clear. When conservative policies are followed the results severely under perform the times when liberal policies are followed. That's a big part of the reason I'm a liberal. Conservative prescriptions have produced greater income inequality, social inequality and legal inequality. As I pointed out on February 17, when it comes to the economy they have also consistently produced poorer growth, unemployment and inflation numbers than when liberal approaches are adopted. Today I'll begin a four-part series on the basic reasons conservative thinking doesn't work. I'll start with an example.

      During the Great Depression President Herbert Hoover’s limousine would often pass families of destitute people begging, holding signs up pleading for work, trying to sell pencils on street corners or camped out in public parks. He reportedly was personally moved by their plight.  More than once he gave of his own personal funds to needy individuals and families, sometimes in person and other times through third parties. Over the objections of his staff, Hoover always refused to let his gifts be publicized in the press.  

     Yet despite these impulses, he refused to consider any form of public, governmental action to help them. With millions facing starvation, private philanthropy and the kind act of a wealthy person here and there were simply unequal to the task. The compassion in his heart notwithstanding, President Hoover’s response to the economic emergency of his presidency was an utter failure. The man who had gotten relief aid to the people of Belgium after World War I and to American flood victims as Commerce Secretary in the 1920s would not countenance engaging the resources of the United States government in his official capacity as president to alleviate the desperate condition of the American people in their hour of greatest need. 

     Hoover was bitterly reviled by the destitute Americans of his time; their shantytowns and homeless encampments came to be called “Hoovervilles.” Running for re-election, he was subsequently thrown out of office by the largest electoral margin of any incumbent president and spent the rest of his long life as a figure of mockery and derision among his fellow citizens.             

     The Hoover presidency stands as the greatest object lesson in why conservative thinking doesn’t work. The most basic and fundamental reason conservative thinking doesn’t work is because it puts ideology ahead of people. The second most common reason conservative thinking doesn’t work is because it so often puts ideology ahead of fact. And the third reason conservative thinking doesn’t work is because it puts ideology ahead of public opinion.

What's At Stake in This Election

A number of questions will be answered on Tuesday November 6, 2012.

Will Medicare be preserved or will it be turned into a voucher plan?

Will Social Security be preserved or privatized and tied to the ups and downs of the stock market?

Will Obamacare be fully instituted or will we go back to having 47 million uninsured citizens at the cost of 45,000 lives per year?

Will Pell Grants for college students be expanded or drastically cut back?

Will workers continue to have the right to organize and bargain or will this be taken away?

In foreign policy, Mitt Romney is surrounded by many of the same neoconservative advisors who believe most overseas problems can be solved militarily and who convinced the last internationally ignorant president into starting a war in Iraq. Will they be back advising the next president?

If they are, will the United States continue to follow strong but measured and effective international policies or will we initiate another land war in the Middle East, likely this time against Iran and/or Syria?

Will FEMA remain a federal responsibility or will it be privatized or turned over to the states, most of which lack sufficient resources to do its job?

Will the economic philosophies of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush be reintroduced?  Or will we go back to investing in the education, technology and infrastructure necessary to compete in the 21st century?

Will child nutrition, aid to schools, head start, Medicaid, disaster relief, veteran's programs for PTSD and other such services be drastically slashed so millionaires can keep from going back to the tax rate they paid under Bill Clinton?

Will the capital gains tax be eliminated so people like Mitt Romney won't have to pay any taxes at all?

Will the sensible regulations on finance emplaced under Dodd-Frank be repealed, and the unimpeded exotic markets in risky instruments like derivatives come roaring back?

Will we throw in our lot with those who deny science or those who embrace it?

Will we elect those who scoff at human-induced climate change or those who intend to do something about it?

Will we safeguard the gains made over the past 60 years in voting rights, women's rights and gay rights or will we empower those who want to roll these all back?

Will we reaffirm the principle of the separation of church and state or will we put in power those who believe it is their obligation to use the power of the state to enforce their version of religion on everyone else?

Will a sensible immigration policy finally be put in place, or will racist and xenophobic sloganeering continue to serve as a substitute for one?

Will anonymous billionaires continue to buy elections and politicians or will sensible campaign finance trasparency and limitations be enacted?

In the final analysis, do we believe that community needs and interests can be served by the democratic process or do we believe that everyone is on their own?

Freedom in Society, Part 4

I conclude this four-part series with a reminder of the reason government exists. In Western thought it is part of a social contract whereby the citizens institute an authority with the mandate to protect their natural rights, those of life, liberty and property, or their pursuit of happiness, if you prefer, in the Jeffersonian expression and extension of the third natural right. It is a compact in which the peace-loving and law-abiding seek security against the predatory and destructive.

We have seen that there are frequently tradeoffs to be made when conflicting liberties collide. It has long been recognized, for instance, that freedom of speech does not include the right to incite deadly panic and that property rights no longer confer an "owner" with the right to bind fellow human beings to unpaid service and deprive them of their liberty. One's freedoms become limited when they begin to detract from those of others.

The level of essential protection and necessary restraint is in the eye of the beholder. These are often questions to be determined by the political process. In the times of the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century, for instance, a laissez-faire understanding of freedom meant that the strong and powerful had license to employ and house workers under appallingly unsafe and unsanitary conditions and to keep them in such penury that many felt forced to risk sending their young children into mines and factories to earn a few extra pennies a day. The rise of the Populist and Progressive movements, however, led to the adoption of child labor laws, building codes and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The "right" of the bosses to cruelly use their laborers and tenants and bilk consumers ran into the countervailing rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of their victims.

So it is today. We see extremists who hold that their right to property means the government has no authority to tax them. Others maintain they have a right to bring loaded firearms to political events. Others yet contend that while a national program to defend citizens' health and lives against foreign enemies is warranted a national program to defend citizens' health and lives against disease and infirmity is impermissible. And there are those who say that rights to things like fair trials with evidence must be dispensed with in certain cases to be determined by them.

These arguments are not new; there have been such since the early days of the republic. The boundaries have always been a bit fuzzy, and the voices of the extreme and the self-serving have usually been the loudest and always the better funded. Yet over time the advocates of decency have advanced nonetheless. As Dr. King put it, "The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice."

Freedom does not mean the right of the cruel and unscrupulous to take advantage of the honest and innocent. Quite the contrary, it means the right of the latter to defend themselves against the former.

Freedom In Society, Part 3

In the last two blogs I have been examining the development of the social contract theory as introduced by Thomas Hobbes and further developed by John Locke. Their view of freedom under law, particularly in the case of Locke, with his "life, liberty and property" formulation of natural rights, restated by Jefferson as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," was integral to the founding ethos of the United States.

As we look at the concept of freedom in action there are always gray areas and special considerations to take into account. For example, Jefferson's "freedom is not license" and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous "freedom of speech does not give one the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" exemplify the principle that it is inadmissible to exercise one's own rights by denying them to others.

That is why one person's right to enjoy loud music in the middle of the night gives way to his neighbor's right to enjoy quiet during normal sleeping hours. That is also why the property owner's right to the labor of his slaves was eventually overturned in favor of the rights of the slaves to their liberty. The general principle is that human rights trump property rights.

These principles lie at the heart of many controversies in contemporary society. If the data show that talking on one's cell phone while driving is equivalent to driving drunk then do the people have the right to legally ban the practice? In other words, does the state's responsibility to protect the lives of its citizens carry greater weight than a driver's freedom to talk on a hand held phone, just as it does with the drunk's freedom to drive a car? I would agree with the eighty percent who say yes, it does.

The same consideration is at the heart of environmental disputes. When a certain level of air pollution is shown to cause a certain number of cases of asthma, heart disease, stroke and the like, is there a point at which the need to protect people's lives and well-being outweighs the right of drivers, fireplace owners or industries to pollute the air without restriction? Of course it does. The question is where to draw the line.

Similarly, we maintain a military defense to protect citizens' lives against foreign enemies. The property right some might prefer to control all their money is superseded by the need to collect taxes to pay for this defense. Is it so much different to hold that the need to protect citizens' lives against disease is an issue of the same kind? It is difficult to see why one is accepted by practically all while the other is styled an alien concept by some. The under girding principle is the same, that the people acting together are obligated to protect the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of society's members.

Freedom in Society, Part 2

Last time we took a look at the inception of social contract theory in Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes taught that civilization required a bargain between people and government wherein citizens give up some freedom to do as they wish and live under legal authority in order to enjoy some security. The ruler enforces order and the people obey the laws. Once such a civil society is established, he believed, the bond is irrevocable.

John Locke accepted the premises of Hobbes' argument for the necessity of giving up some freedom in exchange for security but came at the question from a little different angle. In his Second Treatise of Government, written in 1690, Locke asked some new questions. What interests would have been so essential to a people that they would have yielded some of their freedom of action in order to see that these were protected? Locke came up with three such interests, which he termed the "natural rights." He identified life, liberty and property as these three rights.

But where Hobbes saw submission to lawful authority a one-time event which bound people to obedience thereafter, Locke saw a reciprocal social contract. In his view the governmental authority was established to safeguard the three natural rights. The government was responsible for protecting the citizens' lives from foreign armies or murderers, their liberties from oppressors or kidnappers and their property from thieves. The citizens were obliged in return to obey laws against murder, kidnapping and thievery. Now if a citizen "broke the contract" and stole, then the government could rightfully take away that person's rights by imprisonment, for instance.

That was as far as Hobbes went. But Locke asked, what if the government was the one taking or failing to preserve its people's lives, oppressing their liberties or despoiling their property? In that case, he declared, it was the one breaking the contract and the people would have the right to replace it and establish a new one to better preserve their natural rights. Locke thus made the social contract mutual and reciprocal. The check on the people was to obey the law and the check on the government was to serve their interests.

Where Hobbes' one-sided social contract served as a justification for constitutional monarchy, Locke's formulation instead promoted liberal democracy as the preferred structure to protect liberty under law. That is liberal in the original sense of liberal meaning freedom, a democracy in which civil liberties are protected.

It is in the Lockean sense, of course, that the founding ethic of the United States was established. In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson echoes Locke in the, "inalienable rights" of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and in holding that, "when a long train of abuses" has proven the government remiss in its part of the bargain that the citizens may of right, "erect new safeguards for their future security." In other words, they may change it or even overthrow it violently if there is no other recourse.

I'll explore some further ramifications for rights and the state in my next post.

Freedom in Society, Part 1

The question of freedom is an important one. Freedom is a cardinal value in America, and much of our civic debate centers on what should be regarded as inviolable freedoms and what can or should be subject to limitations. The question has an important bearing on our conception of civilization itself, its standards and its bounds. Must we give up any freedom in order to live in society? And if so, how and where should we set the limits?

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes began thinking and writing about these ideas in the seventeenth century. His great treatise Leviathan (1651) hearkens back to a time before organized society when humans had perfect freedom. Imagine a nomadic Stone Age type of existence before either law or government. Without institutional restrictions on behavior there was perfect freedom. Hobbes refers to this life as the "state of nature." Yet at some point people decided to abandon this perfect freedom and live under the rules and restrictions of society. Why?

That is because though there was perfect freedom there was no security. In the state of nature the prevailing mode of human intercourse was "the war of all against all," resulting in a life that was typically "nasty, brutish and short." If I enjoyed perfect freedom to kill you and take your food I stood under similar threat from you to do the same to me. At some point, Hobbes surmised, people decided to put an end to this dog-eat-dog existence by setting up a leader with the authority to enforce order.

Thus was born what Hobbes called "civil society" under what is now termed the "social contract." The Leviathan would protect the persons and properties of the citizenry and punish evildoers. In return the people would obey his laws. People would not be as absolutely free as before, but they would be more secure. They would enjoy general liberty to conduct their own affairs so long as they refrained from preying on others or disturbing societal order. It was an arrangement freely entered into, Hobbes felt, and unbreakable once formed.

Thus was established the intellectual foundation of constitutional monarchy and liberty under law. It wasn't perfect but it was a start. I'll discuss how the concept was extended in my next post.

Overcoming the Spirit of Faction

I had a discussion today with a Political Science colleague about the extremely negative tenor of the Republican campaign currently being run. He was interested in exploring a a few interesting questions. First, does John McCain actually believe his own recent rhetoric about Obama as a socialist or his running mate's characterizations of Obama as a friend of terrorists? Second, is this an intentional effort on the part of his campaign or the GOP to "poison the well" and make it impossible for Obama to govern so that he can be more easily defeated in 2012? And third, if so, what does this say about the state of our ability to grapple with the many serious problems confronting the nation?

Does McCain himself believe the rhetoric?
I have considered this question in the blog before, beginning on July 5 just after McCain hired the Rove team to run his campaign, and as recently as this Monday. No, I do not believe McCain himself actually subscribes to insinuations that Obama is disloyal to the United States of America, is in league with terrorists, wants to expose kindergartners to graphic sex and so on. What I do believe is that McCain wants to win the election. He became convinced or arrived at the conclusion himself that destroying Obama's personal reputation was his best and perhaps only path to victory. He wants to be elected so badly that he is willing to discard his own previous reputation for civility and go back on his promise to conduct a "respectful campaign on the issues." It is a strategy to him, nothing more and nothing less.

Is this an intentional effort on the part of the McCain campaign or the GOP to "poison the well" and make it impossible for Obama to govern so that he can be more easily defeated in 2012?
On McCain's own part? I would say "no." His event horizon is the election. He knows he will never have another chance to be President and I do not believe he is thinking past November 4 or about anyone else's concerns in the matter. Now, in the case of the Republican National Committee, I would say probably yes. If they cannot prevent him from winning they would like to see a wounded Obama limp weakly into the White House and prove unable to get anything done during his tenure. That would start paying off in the midterm Congressional races in 2010 and possibly give them a good chance to get the top spot back again in 2012. Their concern is to win elections, if not this one, then by laying the ground work for winning the next ones. In the case of related groups like 527 committees, I would say definitely yes. They want to heap as much calumny on Obama and stoke as much outrage as they possibly can. That is the surest way for them to increase their membership rolls and donor bases.

What does this say about the state of our ability to grapple with the many serious problems confronting the nation?
This goes back to the spectre that haunted George Washington when he gave his "Farewell Address" to the nation as he left office in 1796. He warned of a selfish "spirit of faction" by which "cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" would place the good of "party" ahead of the good of the nation and which could "obstruct" and even "destroy" the ability of government to effectively serve the people. There can be little question that when a campaign goes beyond sincere disagreements on policy and political philosophy to the path of attributing to its opponent active treason and moral degeneracy, the object is to rob him of all legitimacy and render him a crippled and ineffective leader. The effects of the politics of character assassination and extreme partisan enmity have been all too obvious for some time in American politics, as attested by the growing backlog of chronic problems unsolved and the worsening level of trust and respect in government at all levels.

Response of the Obama Campaign
Combating this tendency has been one of the primary concerns of the Obama campaign from the start. He was careful not to personally denigrate Hillary Clinton in the primaries, even though things got very heated at times. He has similarly refused to retaliate in kind to the outrageous slurs and fabrications emanating from the Republican camp in the general election. He frequently calls attention to the tactics being used against him and says the American people are "too smart" to be "distracted," that he is confident "it will not work, not this time." Of course, part of this is a plea that the people not succumb to the negative tactics, but part is also preparation for his ability to govern should he win. Obama is trying not to burn bridges but what is more, he is trying to establish a new normative in American political discourse that could make it more possible for both parties to actually work together to get things done without so many shrieking partisans screaming "sellout" every time it is attempted. If the American people are truly ready for this, Obama potentially stands as a transformational president indeed.

Where Do Our Rights Come From?

In America there is a good deal of preoccupation with rights. The American Revolution was primarily fought over a conception of rights. The Declaration of Independence mentions "inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Constitution's first ten Amendments were passed as a package and seek to spell out what the nation's fundamental rights are. They are usually called the "Bill of Rights." Both our major and nearly all our minor political parties compete in part by promising to adhere to what they consider to be the correct interpretation of the original meanings of these rights.

The most popular belief about the origin of these rights among the American people is that they come "from God." We hear mention of our "God-given rights." The Declaration says that the "inalienable rights" apply to "all men" and have been "endowed by their Creator." There is no question that Judeo-Christian thought is an important underpinning in the idea of individual rights. The belief that people stand equal before God and have value to Him long predates the United States, and has much to do with the ideals of individual rights appearing primarily in the Western World.

Yet these ideals did not translate into legal and political rights for a long time. Feudalism defined a rigid class system in Western society for centuries even though that society was strongly Christian. After that, the idea of monarchs ruling by "divine right" was the pre-eminent political understanding in Western Christian society after feudalism began to decline. It was only when Enlightenment rationalism was applied to moral and political discourse that a connection between Christian morality and political freedoms was established in most people's minds. Up to that time ideas like rights and liberties were mainly restricted to the realm of theology and relations between kings, nobles and the Church. It was only after philosophers like John Locke demonstrated the logic of applying these concepts to civil society that they caught on in the popular mind. He is, after all, the writer who came up with the "natural rights" formulation that included "life, liberty and property," and which formed the basis of Jefferson's similar formulation in the Declaration.

The important thing to keep in mind is that historically, nobody has ever been "granted" any of these rights. Freedom of speech and religion, equality under the law, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause, habeas corpus, the right to vote, in short, every limit on royal or representative governmental power over individuals has only come after persistent and often bloody resistance to that power. And once achieved, such limits have had to be maintained and supported by consensus or they have been lost. A citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government had been set up by the Constitutional Convention. "A republic, if you can keep it," was the great man's reply. The record shows that rights are won and maintained only if they are staked out and tenaciously defended.

For example, the 14th Amendment's mandate of "equal protection of the laws" was of little avail to African Americans for nearly a hundred years after its passage due to the hostility of much of the majority to the measure, or to Japanese Americans during the war hysteria after Pearl Harbor. The Bush administration's disregard for habeas corpus and constitutional requirements for jurisprudence and the prevention of torture show just how easily "inalienable rights" can be abridged by a government that whips up fear in order to increase its power and latitude for action.

No, rights are not granted by God. Peoples' idea of what is godly may underlie the rights they demand, but rights have to be fought for by humans here on earth to be won and often fought for again to be sustained. As John F. Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address, "Here on earth God's work must truly be our own."