RUTHFULLY YOURS

If it is to mean anything, it will remain Judeo-Christian, open to all.https://spectator.org/the-need-for-an-american-national-identity/

Many were elated and approved President Trump’s July speech in Warsaw, Poland acknowledging the central role Western civilization plays in defining who we are and what we believe. Our freedom and survival depend on defending it, he said. Beyond that, he celebrated Western civilization as something extraordinary: “What we’ve inherited from our ancestors has never existed to this extent before.”

A vocal few, popular in leftwing opinion circles, condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks as an affront to multiculturalism, labeling his linkage of us with Western civilization, and our pride in it, as “tribalism, white nationalism, and racism,” claiming that references to Western civilization and ancestors are code words for the above mentioned vices. For some, even the broad term Western civilization is offensive and prejudicial since, as with all definitions, it necessarily conveys something distinctive and thus circumscribed.

The question we should answer is: does a country or nation need an identity, a unique identity with salient features that distinguish it from other countries and nations? In his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville gave a resounding affirmation, a yes, to the need for a specific identity. He wrote that a corporate entity remains what it is as long as it operates by the principles upon which it was founded. When it changes those principles, it becomes something entirely different, and the success it had, based on its original formula, becomes uncertain and imperiled. It atrophies and declines. He spoke not against periodic tinkering but warned against fundamental transformation.

According to the wise and prescient Tocqueville, we define an entity by its original principles and the values that created its success. These are the seeds that animate it and supply its people with special spirit. What, then, is America’s identity?

Some say it lies in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which grant us the liberties that enshrine our peoplehood and, on a functional level, make possible a daily life open to achievement, aspirations, and human potential. Our way of life and the blessings that have come to us depend on everyone living within this Constitutional framework and by precluding its replacement or abridgement with another set of laws claiming to be a “higher morality” or temporarily more important, or by enacting waivers or special accommodation in the name of multiculturalism.

There are those today wishing to sideline the Constitution and our historic way of life by invalidating the men, and thus the ideas, behind it. Using charges of racism as the singular and only important lens in which to judge a person’s value, they nullify the totality, the overwhelming contributions, and extraordinary sacrifices of great men and women of a different era. Meanwhile, they grant themselves unassailable superiority and rigid final judgment simply because of their claims to victimhood or for espousing one of the many isms in today’s pantheon for self-righteous virtue signaling. A nation’s historic identity is being replaced by identity politics, culminating frequently in automatic indictment of historical figures simply because their race or moral values are now out of fashion.

There are those in America wishing to define us strictly as a nation of tolerance and inclusivity, this deification resulting often, as in Europe, in tolerating the intolerable and including everyone and everything to the point of endangering those in society not ensconced within rarified and protective gates. They think the best identity is no identity. But this vacuum and void, as witnessed in Europe, allows for other assertive or aggressive identities and mores to creep within and replace, zone by zone; for surely, strong and energized identities will replace the mushy identity of No Identity.

Where are the calls for obstruction charges?

On the matter of President Donald Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, just about any bad thing that could be said has been said. This is the second of a two-part series on the subject, and in the first I described the pardon as “unmerited, unnecessary, and impulsive.” My words were pretty tame compared with those of other disapproving commentators.

But one word you didn’t hear much was “obstruction.”

The word “impeachment” has been invoked here and there. Such talk is fairly muted in Democratic circles, though, at least where the Arpaio pardon is concerned. This apparent smidgeon of self-awareness is welcome. In the context of impeachment, Trump’s clemency grant cannot be discussed without inviting comparisons to disgraceful pardons and commutations issued by Presidents Obama and Clinton.

There is a good reason for that, which we’ll get to.

Notice, though, that despite broad disapproval of the Arpaio pardon, cutting across partisan and ideological lines, few critics have panned it as an instance — or yet another instance — of Trump’s potentially criminal obstruction of legal processes.

That seems strange. After all, there have been strident calls for the investigation and possible indictment of Trump over his purported obstruction of the Flynn probe — i.e., the FBI’s investigation of retired General Michael Flynn, fleetingly the president’s national-security adviser. Those strident calls have not been for naught: They led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Obstruction is said to be a critical component of his ongoing Trump-Russia investigation.

The specter of obstruction was first raised by James Comey, the FBI director eventually fired by Trump — a firing that Trump detractors promptly added to the putative obstruction case. In fact, when it came to light that Comey steered to the New York Times an internal FBI memo he’d written about Trump’s pressuring him over Flynn, the former director admitted he was hoping to trigger the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president.

Consider this: A pardon is the ultimate obstruction of a criminal investigation. It is checkmate. The federal prosecutors and investigating agents in the Arpaio case could complain as vigorously as former director Comey has about the president’s trampling on the independence of law enforcement. But it would change nothing. A presidential pardon stamps their file case closed.

The Flynn case was never closed. Trump did not pardon Flynn, though he could have (and still could). By any fair accounting, the president’s expression of “hope” that Comey would drop the case constitutes heavy-duty pressure from the boss. But as we’ve repeatedly pointed out, pressure is not obstruction. The investigation was not shut down. It continues and, according to some reports, portends real jeopardy for Flynn.

Consider, also, the circumstances surrounding the Arpaio pardon. It has been reported by the Washington Post that, weeks before the former top lawman in Maricopa County was put on trial, President Trump indicated to Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he would like to see the case dropped. Sessions is said to have told the president that doing so would be inappropriate. Trump thus agreed to let the prosecution go forward . . . but with the proviso that he would issue a pardon if Arpaio were convicted — a foolish calculation on Trump’s part (we’ll get to that, too).

To repeat: The pardon completely aborts the prosecution of Arpaio. Yet it is not the pardon that has prompted shrieking about obstruction; it is Trump’s consultation with Sessions. Of course, far from aborting the case, the upshot of that consultation — breathlessly decried as political interference in law enforcement — is that Arpaio was fully investigated, tried, and convicted.

Donald Trump told us that he’d hire the best people. He didn’t mention that he’d be unable to fire them.

The president is experiencing a bout of insubordination from his top officials the likes of which we haven’t witnessed in the modern era. It’s not unusual to have powerful officials at war among themselves, or in the presidential doghouse. It’s downright bizarre to have them publicly undercut the president without fear of consequence.

The new measure of power in Washington is how far you can go criticizing the president at whose pleasure you serve. The hangers-on and junior players must do it furtively and anonymously. Only a principal like Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, or James Mattis can do it out in the open and get away with it.

First, it was chief economic adviser Cohn saying in an interview that the administration — i.e., Donald J. Trump — must do a better job denouncing hate groups. Then it was Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting in a stunning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that the rest of the government speaks for American values, but not necessarily the president. Finally, Secretary of Defense Mattis contradicted without a moment’s hesitation a Trump tweet saying we are done talking with North Korea.

In a more normal time, in a more normal administration, any of these would be a firing offense. Tillerson, in particular, should have been told before he was off the set of Fox News on Sunday that he was only going to be allowed to return to the seventh floor of the State Department to clean out his desk.

The fact that this hasn’t happened is an advertisement of Trump’s precarious standing, broadcast by officials he himself selected for positions of significant power and prestige. This isn’t the work of the deep state, career bureaucrats maneuvering or leaking from somewhere deep within the agencies. This is the shallow state, the very top layer of the government, operating in broad daylight.

Trump, of course, largely brought this on himself. He is reaping the rewards of his foolish public spat with Jeff Sessions and of his woeful Charlottesville remarks.

By publicly humiliating his own attorney general, Trump seemed to want to make him quit. When Sessions stayed put, Trump didn’t fire him because he didn’t want to deal with the fallout. In the implicit showdown, Sessions had won. Not only had Trump shown that he was all bark and no bite, he had demonstrated his lack of loyalty to those working for him.

So why should those working for him fear him or be loyal to him? With his loss of moral legitimacy post-Charlottesville, the president is more dependent on the people around him than they are on him.

“Globalist Gary,” as his Trumpist enemies style him, is invested with considerable market power, more than any political official besides the president himself. Tillerson is eminently replaceable, but his immediate sacking would be too destabilizing. If Mattis were to leave, it would cause a freak-out on Capitol Hill and around the world.

Kenny Herring was very angry over a neighbor’s barbecue fire. It was early in the morning in St. Louis. Kristy Lynn Thompson, Kenny’s wife, handed him a large butcher knife.

And then Kenny tried to make mincemeat out of his neighbor.

When the cops came, the neighbor had stab wounds on his face and torso, and defensive wounds on his arms.

Kenny’s butcher knife pierced his left lung.

But Kenny still wasn’t done. He waved the knife around and stabbed an officer in the arm. And was shot and killed. Thompson was arrested and charged with assault and criminal action.

It’s not an unusual story. This is what police officers do a lot of the time when they make “housecalls” in St. Louis, Baltimore, Oakland and Detroit. It wasn’t the first time the cops had been forced to respond to “domestic disturbances” at Kenny’s place. But now it would be the last.

What happened on Ridge Avenue was bad. But it could have been much worse for the victims of Kenny’s violent rampage.

The victim has a collapsed lung. He will spend time in rehab and will probably never be the same again. The police officers who shot Kenny will need counselling. All of them will relive that horrible morning in their nightmares.

But wait. The story isn’t over.

Kenny Herring was African-American and he identified as “Kiki”, a woman. And by the left’s current rules that means that no matter whom he stabbed, the police officers had no right to shoot him.

There is never any excuse for shooting a member of an intersectional “marginalized” group.

Activists claimed that the downstairs neighbors had been “bullying” and “harassing” Kenny for years. These accusations against the victim of a violent crime were never backed by a single shred of evidence. Instead it was assumed that if a member of an oppressed group stabs his neighbor through the lung, the man he stabbed must have had it coming. There were even calls to free Thompson to “mourn” Herring.

At one of the big summer events that enthrall those who dwell inside the D.C. bubble, interns from Conservatism, Inc. square off against interns from Libertarian, Inc. at a debate hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute. The annual event, which occurred earlier this month, once again exposed a problem that has hounded conservatives for quite some time: they’ve forgotten how to persuade. They speak in clichés. And even the youngsters sound like old fogeys. https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/30/black-hole-modern-conservative-rhetoric/

“From what I observed,” writes Maria Beiry, an editorial assistant for the American Conservative who reported on the event, “millennials at this debate—many of whom will go on to be leaders in Washington—were not taking to conservatism.”

Why not? While the libertarians “favored data” and used it “to not only drive home their points but also to call into question the conservative argument,” conservatives spurned those arguments and “favored philosophy.”

“At the mention of philosophers such as Aristotle,” Beiry reports, “audible ‘what’s’ and ‘heh’s’ could be heard among the students.”

Jargon and Checklists
These difficulties flow from a central problem: conservatives seem to go out of their way not to be understood. More and more, there appears to be nothing of substance behind the jargon they employ.

Just as “Christianese”—used increasingly in Evangelical Christian circles—has had a tendency to crowd out biblical orthodoxy, “conservatese” has similarly tended to push aside anything of intellectual substance in political conservatism. Words and phrases that have been carefully crafted in the conservative echo chamber sound a false note when they’re used in front of audiences who aren’t predisposed to nod their heads in agreement.

And over time, such language has had a wearing and wearying effect on those who use it, dulling their minds in the process. Conservative rhetoric has become full of slogans and shortcuts for arguments—mere boxes on a checklist—rather than invitations to dialogue and debate.

As Paul Gottfried points out, vague sentiments such as “the permanent things” and words like “values” appropriated and defined in the popular imagination by Progressives have come to define conservative rhetoric. It’s become a bit of a joke that’s apparently over the heads of those who regularly speak in such dreary ways.

Modern conservative rhetoric also has a penchant for the non-political, attempting to drain political life of its vitality and seeking to replace it with the contemplative life simply.

For instance, the notion that “beauty will save the world” heard on many a serious liberal arts campus offers no real guidance for politics and can be harmful for the young, especially because they are so likely to misunderstand it. Children, after all, are typically moved by their untutored passions rather than by reason and often mistake ugliness or fads for beauty. On an intellectual level, this kind of rhetoric is imprecise, sloppy, and undermines the philosophical foundations upon which the conservative project is built. Cut it out, already.

Conservative Rhetoric on Race
Not all conservative rhetoric, however, is quite so self-defeating.

The argument from some conservatives that the “Democrats are the real racists” should not be so easily dismissed. It is an understandable attempt to turn the tables on their foes, pointing out that Republicans have a much better track record on civil rights and simultaneously laying bare the Democrats’ grim legacy on race.

Gerard Alexander, for example, has demolished the narrative that the Republicans’ rise in the South in the latter half of the 20th century was due to racism. In a deep dive into the research, he shows

the GOP finally became the region’s dominant party in the least racist phase of the South’s entire history, and it got that way by attracting most of its votes from the region’s growing and confident communities—not its declining and fearful ones.

The GOP, of course, was founded on anti-slavery principles. The Republican Party platform of 1856 opposed both slavery and, interestingly, polygamy, calling them the “twin relics of barbarism.”

Democrats, in contrast, historically have been more opposed to the principle of natural human equality than not. From Alexander Stephens, who as the vice president of the Confederacy argued that the principle of equality was an “error,” to Barbara Norton, a Louisiana state representative who said that the founders were “teaching . . . a lie” when they wrote “all men are created equal,” Democrats have habitually been on the wrong side of human equality.

A president’s pardoning power is absolute, as every judge knows, and just as absolute is the certainty that every pardon will be met by a hail of hosannas and a howl of complaint and grievance from someone.

The liberals and others on the left are beside themselves over President Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who came a cropper with a federal judge who held him in contempt for enforcing the law on the border when nobody else would.

Sen. John McCain, who would denounce this president if the president gave him a winning lottery ticket, denounced the pardon because “no one is above the law.” Others are treating the pardon as foreshadowing the end of the world.

A columnist at the Detroit Free Press, where locking up everybody might be an attractive solution to crime and mayhem in the sinister streets of Detroit, suggests with typical liberal/progressive/left-wing outrage that it’s time to give up on a country that would elect Donald Trump as its president.

“With one reckless stroke of his pen, [Mr.] Trump last week trashed all those notions of American exceptionalism, and raised serious questions about whether this republic might survive his presidency, or whether it even deserves to.” An editor at the Free Press should give the poor fellow an aspirin, and let him lie down until he feels better.

Mr. McCain could use a good lie-down, too, perhaps not with an aspirin but something stronger, and remind him that a pardon can’t be above the law, because it’s a part of the law. All presidents have used their constitutional power to pardon those whom they think deserve it (and sometimes when they don’t). Some presidents, like Bill Clinton, have profitably pardoned the undeserving.

The New York Times called in one of its usual suspects to express the usual contempt for the president and his sin of the day. Prof. Martin Redish of the Northwestern Law School, with a novel theory of the Constitution, thinks Mr. Trump could be successfully challenged on constitutional grounds because Sheriff Joe, as he was popularly called when he tried to resolve the hell on the border, was convicted of violating constitutional rights, “in defiance of a court order involving racial profiling.”

“Good luck with that theory, professor,” observes the New York Sun. “The thinking at Northwestern seems to be that one can be pardoned for kidnapping, murder or espionage — any federal crime — only so long as constitutional rights weren’t violated.” The professor obviously needs a refresher course in the law, and there are correspondence law schools where he could take a tutorial without having to miss teaching any of his own classes at Northwestern.

Most pardons are controversial, whether by presidents or governors, and every pardon, whether for a real crime, or contempt, which is only contempt of a judge. Not very nice, of course, but judges often have skin as thin as tissue paper, and the judge who sentenced Sheriff Joe, U.S. District G. Murray Snow is infamous among Arizona lawyers for his exceedingly thin skin, and his sometime preference for upholding personal whim, if not the law.