An Interesting Speech

OK… it’s not terribly interesting unless you’re a nerd like me. In which case it’s fascinating!

I ponder long haul, “through the eye of history”, systems of wise governance. The chaos of the day sucks. I wish people would turn off Twitter and read a fucking book. We’re supposedly adults. We’re theoretically equipped to maintain civilization during our time. Yet we founder and waffle. We unwisely let fools meddle with forces beyond their ken. We let them manipulate money they didn’t earn, make rules they won’t follow, and force other people do their bidding.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We have the wisdom of the ages. The internet (and libraries) offer two thousands years (and more!) of carefully considered ideas. It’s as relevant now as when the Greeks wrestled with the same issues. Starting with Socrates, continuing clear through the Enlightenment, and marching right up until today; smart thinkers have sought the right path. They cared. They thought about their statements. As imperfect as they are, they’re better than a mob. If you block a road, hit someone with a stick, or seek an ill considered impeachment, your heart may be in the right place; but your mind isn’t.

Real thinkers should merit our attention, not journalists. Journalists are losers. You met them in college. They were too dumb for other topics. “I’m majoring in public speaking. I want to change the world!” Really? The rest of us worked through chemistry and calculus. We learned to do. They learned to talk.

Give a microphone to a human mannequin and he/she will report whatever they’re told. They supplant slogans for reason: the rich are oppressors, the poor are helpless, people are malleable, people are without agency, people are widgets, freedom is a burden, being managed is good, people are expenses to be paid, they’re mouths to be fed, the electoral college is outdated, perfectly creased pants matter, judge politicians by their words but not their actions, judge a law by it’s intent but not its result, pigeonhole individuals by group identity, history started last week, slavery is uniquely American, borders are passé, rules mean only what judges say, what judges say only matters if it’s the right judge, fly-over voters are inferior, bi-coastal elites are superior, citizenship is irrelevant, nations are irrelevant, science is irrelevant… These things come from intellectual lightweights. They don’t know what they’re saying because they have no thoughts behind the words.

The quotes I list below don’t fit on a bumper sticker, they won’t be a zinger on “The View”, late night comedians can’t weave jokes around them, and no journalist will report it. I aim (imperfectly) above the weeds of tactical scorched earth daily politics.

These snippets are from a speech by Attorney General Barr. Despite being trapped in our current partisan stupidity, he posits interesting points. It’s not so much things we didn’t know as things that needed to be said, once again.

Regardless of your party affiliation and even if you loathe our current president, it’s good to think about long term wise governance. It’s time for considerations beyond emotions. It’s actually well past the moment of inflection.

The “quelle surpise” election of 2016 led to a cognitive dissonance shitstorm and I get that. Surprises are hard. But it has never abated and it became creepy. As the 2019 year of madness slowly leads to the 2020 year of pants shitting hysteria it’s time to chill out, dust off the civics lessons we all forgot decades ago, and think about why we have an executive.

Happy reading:

As I have said, the Framers fully expected intense pulling and hauling between the Congress and the President. Unfortunately, just in the past few years, we have seen these conflicts take on an entirely new character.

Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called “The Resistance,” and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration. Now, “resistance” is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous – indeed incendiary – notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the “loyal opposition,” as opposing parties have done in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.

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Congress has in recent years also largely abdicated its core function of legislating on the most pressing issues facing the national government. They either decline to legislate on major questions or, if they do, punt the most difficult and critical issues by making broad delegations to a modern administrative state that they increasingly seek to insulate from Presidential control. This phenomenon first arose in the wake of the Great Depression, as Congress created a number of so-called “independent agencies” and housed them, at least nominally, in the Executive Branch.

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In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a “rule of law” standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying, in a given circumstance was universalized – that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?

For these reasons, conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means. And this is as it should be, but there is no getting around the fact that this puts conservatives at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy war, especially when doing so under the weight of a hyper-partisan media.

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The Framers did not envision that the Courts would play the role of arbiter of turf disputes between the political branches.

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[t]he Constitution gives Congress and the President many “clubs with which to beat” each other. Conspicuously absent from the list is running to the courts to resolve their disputes.

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[i]f the political branches believe the courts will resolve their constitutional disputes, they have no incentive to debate their differences through the democratic process — with input from and accountability to the people. And they will not even try to make the hard choices needed to forge compromise.

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Attempts by courts to act like amateur psychiatrists attempting to discern an Executive official’s “real motive” — often after ordering invasive discovery into the Executive Branch’s privileged decision-making process — have no more foundation in the law than a subpoena to a court to try to determine a judge’s real motive for issuing its decision. And courts’ indulgence of such claims, even if they are ultimately rejected, represents a serious intrusion on the President’s constitutional prerogatives.

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The Constitution does not confer “rights” on foreign enemies. Rather the Constitution is designed to maximize the government’s efficiency to achieve victory – even at the cost of “collateral damage” that would be unacceptable in the domestic realm. The idea that the judiciary acts as a neutral check on the political branches to protect foreign enemies from our government is insane.

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In this partisan age, we should take special care not to allow the passions of the moment to cause us to permanently disfigure the genius of our Constitutional structure.

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I know. I’m totally out of sync with the internet age. Forgive me. I just posted a lot of wordy, boring, speechifying. But it’s good stuff. I’m indulging in a theory that my audience (small and irrelevant as it is) are happy to see meat on a post’s bones.

If it’s TL:DR for the kind of society that invents the nomenclature “TL:DR”, that’s OK with me. I also know that folks in the thrall of an “Orange Man Bad” hissy fit, won’t hear what’s being said. I can live with that too. It’s not even a “one team” thing. Folks who like Trump but don’t know why (other than he’s not Hillary Clinton) won’t get it either. I accept that.

Both sides have plenty of dumb. That’s a given. But I liked this speech. I felt encouraged that at least one guy was talking about the balance between Legislative, Judiciary, and Executive branches. Partisan or not, he was at least not talking down to us. I enjoy depth beyond than the usual “politician on my team yay, politician on other team boo” that passes for discourse.

Gird your loins y’all. Regardless of your political bent we can all agree 2020 is going to be stupid shallow people shitting on a fan… for a full year. Take solace when possible. Retreat to depth of thought when the option appears. Good luck.

A.C.

BTW: This speech was delivered the 19th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s 2019 National Lawyers Convention. (Links to the text are here and here.)