TEMPO and HUP

A Blog for Civil Debate on Political Philosophy

A Blog for Civil Debate on Political Philosophy

Shortchanged !

July 4, 2020 by Alan Bernstein 9 Comments

Those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 have not got what they wanted. Between their hopes and his performance, there is a great disconnect. The coalition that backed 2016 candidate Trump falls into five sometimes overlapping categories. Let’s consider them one-by-one.

            Business conservatives measure the country’s strength by its economy and its openness to entrepreneurial creativity. They seek to provide goods and services, to employ others, to gain profit, accumulate wealth and pass it on to their children. Many favored Trump as a fellow business owner and assumed he would think as they do. Yet Trump is a negative example. He ridicules expertise, rejects information contrary to his intuitions, and lies. Who would hire such a man?

            Trump poses as a friend to business, but he is not. He opposes open competition, promotes his own family’s interests, those of his donors, and some industries over others. He manipulates markets with arbitrarily imposed tariffs (a hidden tax) and mistakenly identifies the country’s well-being with the stock market thereby favoring short-term over long-term thinking. His myopia incurs tremendous costs. The country will benefit most from industries geared to succeed in markets that are open, not manipulated to reward a select few. Investors avoid uncertainty, but he governs arbitrarily.

            Trump’s tax policies are counter-productive. Yes, his 2017 reform simplified tax filing (almost doubling the standard deduction), temporarily lowered tax rates for each bracket, and increased the child tax credit until 2025, but permanently reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, increased the allowance for tax-free inheritance from $11 to $22 million, and continued a 20% “pass through” or “carried interest” deduction that favors larger businesses. These regressive policies deny opportunity, squelch creativity, and reduce competition. What’s more, since the tax cut and before the coronavirus arrived, the GDP and corporate tax receipts surged momentarily and have since declined. Fiscal conservatives should be concerned. 

            Libertarians see taxes as a “taking” by the government, whose size must be minimized. Individual rights are their core value. Obligations cannot be imposed, rights not removed. Guns may be owned, consciences protected, expert recommendations for health (such as in the current Covid-19 pandemic) ignored, because each citizen is autonomous—free from the nanny state. Yet this individualism weakens the ties between neighbors, between employers and employees, vendors and their clients, citizens and their representatives. Moreover, freedom is not absolute. Free speech is limited as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes illustrated with the example of crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The law prohibits deceptive advertising and requires accurate labeling. Appeal to conscience cannot promote discrimination because discrimination violates the rights of others.

            There’s a point where individual rights collide. Wearing face masks in the present pandemic is an excellent example. If you exercise your freedom not to wear a mask, you may infect me; but I have a right to my health. There are times when everyone should hunker down in cooperation with everyone else. By ostentatiously refusing to wear a face mask, the President promotes not libertarian, individual rights, but infection. His action undermines libertarian thought by reducing it to the absurd.

            Respect for the individual rights might be Trump’s strongest suit were it not for his idiosyncratic abuse of the principle. In a president whose function our constitution delimited very carefully, his rejection of norms is destructive. His demands of personal loyalty, vindictive treatment of critics, repeated lying, and self-contradiction weaken the ideal. He said so himself at Mount Rushmore last night as he falsely projected his own crimes onto his opponents: “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission . . . [are] the very definition of totalitarianism.” Libertarian principles require critical thinking, not obedience. Trump’s use of the bullying tactics he pretends to deplore, exposes in him the very tyranny against which libertarians consider themselves the most stalwart defenders.

            Patriotism connects citizens as individuals to the country as a community. Yet Trump debases those bonds. We should take pride in our achievements without putting others down. Disparaging countries with lower standards of living as “shitholes,” characterizing Latin American immigrants as “drug dealers, criminals, and rapists,” using the crimes of a few to smear all Muslims as terrorists, while —at home— praising violent bigots as “very good people” undercuts our reputation. Certainly, we must, as a people, define our own identity. “You can’t have a country without borders,” a conservative told me. Right. But if we are the country that the most outspoken, self-declared patriots claim it to be, we will bond among ourselves according to exemplary principles.

            Those principles are already enshrined in the constitution, specifically in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, that abolish slavery, provide due process, equal protection, and voting rights. The constitution is a complex web of provisions —not just the Second Amendment, as the President seems to think. It is also an agenda. We still need to correct some of its initial compromises on women’s rights, the horrible legacy of slavery, and our oppression of native Americans. With these wrongs corrected, our patriotism will be more easily exportable and our pride will shine brighter.

            Our advancement of science, innovations in medicine, technology, the arts and education, are areas where, especially in the post-war period, we have stood out among nations and even in world history. Sadly, the President disparages these achievements. He encourages a mindless anti-elitism that lowers our goals and saps our national ambition. Even if libertarians and business conservatives wish to reduce the federal government, its personnel should still be an all-star cast, an Olympic team. Yet Trump and his cabinet members (often temporary and therefore not vetted by the Senate) have silenced or expelled from agencies that formerly provided leadership for this country and for the world experts and scientists who question erroneous beliefs cherished in the White House or pushed by top interest groups. OSHA is one example. They have made its coronavirus guidelines for workers in close quarters mere recommendations that can be ignored with impunity. They have weakened the once prestigious Center for Disease Control to the point that, as of today, leading medical schools can no longer rely on its reports. Consequently, our efforts against the coronavirus dramatically lag behind those of other countries. Under Trump, our national reputation suffers.

            National defense is perhaps the principal job of the Commander in Chief. Patriotic fervor marches in step with military success and national security. Coming of age in the ‘fifties, with relatives and teachers and cherished older friends who were Word War II veterans, I once knew this feeling. In the meantime, many presidents have erred, but perhaps none so egregiously as Donald Trump. He has undermined resistance to Russia, made a secret and therefore unenforceable deal with Kim Jong-un, and delivered our friends the Kurds to Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan. Like these despots who share his own authoritarian personality, he discounts the advice of his defense and intelligence institutions. America is no longer first among nations.

            Religious conservatives are vital to Donald Trump’s support. They respect moral purity in the sense of correct sexual behavior and therefore resisted divorce and premarital sex. Now they oppose same-sex marriage and abortion. To implement these prohibitions, they invoke the First Amendment and stress the freedom clause over the establishment clause. But how can they deny the symmetry the Founders instituted between those two tendencies? “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or infringing the free exercise thereof.” The two —designedly— oppose each other like the constitution’s other checks and balances. Their insistence ignores the threat the Founders feared most: imposition of a single, official religion on their new nation. If that’s what they wanted, they had a king. Yet Donald Trump courts the support of dogmatic backers whose sole interpretation of what is right should be, they say, the law of the land. Libertarians and others who appeal to conscience should reject such an infringement of our liberties.

            Although religious conservatives don’t stress it much, religious teachings also encompass correct behavior towards one another. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Of the Good Samaritan, Jesus commanded: “Go and do likewise.” The New Testament enjoins generous behavior towards “the least” among us. Judaism and Islam similarly elevate care for others as a moral obligation. The rabbinic sages as well declared that “the righteous of all nations have a portion in the world to come,” thereby sensitizing the community to outsiders of good will. These injunctions impose on all of us an obligation to care for others. But, in courting opponents of abortion rights, Donald Trump backs those with the most limited view of religion, sexual purity. That’s actually very funny.

            Here religious and business perspectives go in the same direction. Just as religion prescribes care for the stranger, so business rewards the objective evaluation of every individual’s talents. But Trump’s anti-immigration policy discourages precisely the kind of people business conservatives should welcome: daring, enterprising people willing to endure hardship and tackle the unknown. Acceptance of these immigrants would elevate both entrepreneurial and religious values. But, erecting barriers of ethnicity, race, religion, and class, Trump says “no.”

            Constitutionalists. Many of the 2016 Trump backers hoped to limit government to increase their own freedom of action: to conduct business, to bear arms, to exclude undesirables, to prohibit immorality. They were tired of “legislation from the Bench.” The appointment of conservative judges and Supreme Court justices would support these goals, they thought. Although he invoked “the law of society and nature” at Mount Rushmore yesterday, he has consistently violated the rule of law. Ignoring the 10th Amendment, he declared “When someone is president of the United States the authority is total,” hoping to combat the coronavirus pandemic by dictating to the states’ governors. In opposition to long established procedures of inquiry, his obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation was so consistent that Robert Mueller could only conclude that he could not be exonerated. The president’s authoritarian personality directly opposes the Supreme Court’s motto: “equal justice under law.” The president is a citizen, not a king. In choosing Trump, constitutionalists got shortchanged.

            Conclusion. Trump has therefore betrayed all these voters. Millions have donated, invested even, in this no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is, non-conformist, often-bankrupt billionaire. They expected reinforcement of their worldview and possibly an improved economic outlook. But no hoped-for personal, financial, or ideological benefit should outweigh the duty to protect our constitution and our country. Patriotism, constitutionalism, faith, and allegiance to country should mean more than loyalty to one party’s leader. Fortunately, our constitution allows us to dismiss this self-serving, vindictive, autocratic, incompetent president. Given his authoritarianism, if we do not replace him now, we may never have another chance. Therefore, on this Fourth of July before the 2020 election, I urge Trump’s 2016 voters to repudiate him and begin as soon as possible to work for his defeat in November.

Static Action

April 15, 2020 by Alan Bernstein 9 Comments

I wrote this essay in early April, 2020, just as physical distancing was emerging as a way to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. The nation’s fate in this pandemic must be understood in the context of Donald Trump’s administration. The personal reality he has constructed undercuts the country’s medical experts’ efforts at fact-gathering and analysis. President Trump and key members of his administration have suppressed the rule of law, the balance of powers, and open debate. The President and his supporters consistently deny the scientific evidence of global warming. (By the way, I don’t call it “climate change.” If the temperature of the oceans rises, that’s a global phenomenon, not a variation in climate.) They deny the intelligence community’s evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr (March 24, 2019) gave a misleading summation of the Mueller Report, and Mueller himself wrote a “conclusion” far weaker than what his own team’s evidence required (April 18, 2019).

In early January, 2020, President Trump’s Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, a former intelligence officer in the Marines, and a former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Hong Kong, learned from an epidemiologist there that the novel coronavirus, “which originated in the city of Wuhan, was being transmitted by people who were showing no symptoms.” (NYTimes, April 12, A1, 13-15 at p. 14 B). For Matthew Pottinger’s impressive career, see this link.) Thus, a Hong Kong doctor, during months of anti-China demonstrations in that city, revealed that China was covering up a more rapid spread of the disease than merely tracking the symptoms would indicate. The President did not wish to alarm the American people. At the same time, he was trying to conclude a trade deal with China, so he did not wish to upset the Chinese government. He was enduring the Senate’s impeachment trial. Even though his acquittal was a foregone conclusion, surely this was a difficult time for him. These are understandable distractions, but this sympathy can go too far. He is president of a republic, first among equals, not an isolated individual. The President’s premise is that nothing goes wrong in Trump’s America, and when it does, the fault lies elsewhere. The threat of an invisible pandemic should override the president’s ambitions on trade, his political fate, or his popularity ratings. As this article in the Wall Street Journal shows, President Trump’s priorities have hampered the doctors and scientists working to protect the public and to devise measures effective against COVID-19.

Nonetheless, following the advice of medical experts, a vast proportion of the U. S. population now cooperates by “sheltering-in-place” to avoid catching or spreading the coronavirus. There is naturally some resentment of those who violate the quarantine. Critics of those who, without good reason, refuse to shelter in place contrast our peers to the generation that fought WWII by saying “My grandparents went to war all around the world to make our country safe yet we refuse to help by staying home.” Right. Still, the coronavirus is a new threat that arrives in the midst of this broader, Trumpian crisis — less life-threatening in the short term, but more dangerous to the freedom we Americans cherish. So “just staying home” even though helpful in fighting the coronavirus, is not enough for the overall situation.

We must not let the fight for physical health become a moral decline. We’re in a weird situation: active cooperation by sheltering in place can become a sin of omission. We can’t just shrug and say, “that was something I couldn’t change.” The question remains: If culpable complacency is suicide, what is to be done? I asked that question once to my skeptics’ discussion group, and two folks roared back, “Ring doorbells. Get the hell out there.” Electoral politics. That may not be enough. We can bring change. With intellect, resilience, creativity, and resolve; with facts, and reason, and a clear view of the world as it is, we can devise constructive actions. Until the virus is somewhat tamed and it’s safe to go out, we must convert our physical isolation into action. We can donate online to worthy causes and candidates whose priorities we share. Even more important: we can write. They say “the pen is mightier than the sword,” but it might not be mightier than the lie. What we can do is expose the lie. Speak, write, and tweet the truth — often. Write the truth (very concisely) on a picket sign and, when the time comes, march.

In defense of science, UC Berkeley, 4/22/2017

     I hope these lines encourage many to act along with me, but there’s a proviso. We must convince others. Self-congratulatory circles have some benefit, but they risk being no more than collective isolation. I found an important clue in a New York Times opinion piece by Viet Thanh Nguyen. “What this crisis has revealed is that, while almost all of us can become vulnerable — even corporations and the wealthy — our government prioritizes the protection of the least vulnerable.” That formulation is too cryptic to use in exactly those words, but it is at the core of our troubles. Expound that truth as far as possible and we will burst from this confinement with new drive. We will strengthen our empathy and acknowledge that those who sheltered in place and those who bring them their food and hook up their oxygen have bonded, recognized the mutual responsibility their relationship demands, and will negotiate a far more equitable social contract.

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