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Saturday, November 30, 2024
November 29, 2024
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November 30, 2024
Cas Mudde, a political scientist who specializes in extremism and democracy, observed yesterday on Bluesky that “the fight against the far right is secondary to the fight to strengthen liberal democracy.” That’s a smart observation. During World War II, when the United States led the defense of democracy against fascism, and after it, when the U.S. stood against communism, members of both major political parties celebrated American liberal democracy. Democratic presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower made it a point to emphasize the importance of the rule of law and people’s right to choose their government, as well as how much more effectively democracies managed their economies and how much fairer those economies were than those in which authoritarians and their cronies pocketed most of a country’s wealth. Those mid-twentieth-century presidents helped to construct a “liberal consensus” in which Americans rallied behind a democratic government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. That government was so widely popular that political scientists in the 1960s posited that politicians should stop trying to court voters by defending its broadly accepted principles. Instead, they should put together coalitions of interest groups that could win elections. As traditional Republicans and Democrats moved away from a defense of democracy, the power to define the U.S. government fell to a small faction of “Movement Conservatives” who were determined to undermine the liberal consensus. Big-business Republicans who hated regulations and taxes joined with racist former Democrats and patriarchal white evangelicals who wanted to reinforce traditional race and gender hierarchies to insist that the government had grown far too big and was crushing individual Americans. In their telling, a government that prevented businessmen from abusing their workers, made sure widows and orphans didn’t have to eat from garbage cans, built the interstate highways, and enforced equal rights was destroying the individualism that made America great, and they argued that such a government was a small step from communism. They looked at government protection of equal rights for racial, ethnic, gender, and religious minorities, as well as women, and argued that those protections both cost tax dollars to pay for the bureaucrats who enforced equal rights and undermined a man’s ability to act as he wished in his place of business, in society, and in his home. The government of the liberal consensus was, they claimed, a redistribution of wealth from hardworking taxpayers—usually white and male—to undeserving marginalized Americans. When voters elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Movement Conservatives’ image of the American government became more and more prevalent, although Americans never stopped liking the reality of the post–World War II government that served the needs of ordinary Americans. That image fed forty years of cuts to the post–World War II government, including sweeping cuts to regulations and to taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, always with the argument that a large government was destroying American individualism. It was this image of government as a behemoth undermining individual Americans that Donald Trump rode to the presidency in 2016 with his promises to “drain the swamp” of Washington, D.C., and it is this image that is leading Trump voters to cheer on billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as they vow to cut services on which Americans depend in order to cut regulations and taxes once again for the very wealthy and corporations. But that image of the American government is not the one on which the nation was founded. Liberal democracy was the product of a moment in the 1600s in which European thinkers rethought old ideas about human society to emphasize the importance of the individual and his (it was almost always a “him” in those days) rights. Men like John Locke rejected the idea that God had appointed kings and noblemen to rule over subjects by virtue of their family lineage, and began to explore the idea that since government was a social compact to enable men to live together in peace, it should rest not on birth or wealth or religion, all of which were arbitrary, but on natural laws that men could figure out through their own experiences. The Founders of what would become the United States rested their philosophy on an idea that came from Locke’s observations: that individuals had the right to freedom, or “liberty,” including the right to consent to the government under which they lived. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In the early years of the American nation, defending the rights of individuals meant keeping the government small so that it could not crush a man through taxation or involuntary service to the government or arbitrary restrictions. The Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—explicitly prohibited the government from engaging in actions that would hamper individual freedom. But in the middle of the nineteenth century, Republican president Abraham Lincoln began the process of adjusting American liberalism to the conditions of the modern world. While the Founders had focused on protecting individual rights from an overreaching government, Lincoln realized that maintaining the rights of individuals required government action. To protect individual opportunity, Lincoln argued, the government must work to guarantee that all men—not just rich white men—were equal before the law and had equal access to resources, including education. To keep the rich from taking over the nation, he said, the government must keep the economic playing field between rich and poor level, dramatically expand opportunity, and develop the economy. Under Lincoln, Republicans reenvisioned liberalism. They reworked the Founders’ initial stand against a strong government, memorialized by the Framers in the Bill of Rights, into an active government designed to protect individuals by guaranteeing equal access to resources and equality before the law for white men and Black men alike. They enlisted the power of the federal government to turn the ideas of the Declaration of Independence into reality. Under Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, progressives at the turn of the twentieth century would continue this reworking of American liberalism to address the extraordinary concentrations of wealth and power made possible by industrialization. In that era, corrupt industrialists increased their profits by abusing their workers, adulterating milk with formaldehyde and painting candies with lead paint, dumping toxic waste into neighborhoods, and paying legislators to let them do whatever they wished. Those concerned about the survival of liberal democracy worried that individuals were not actually free when their lives were controlled by the corporations that poisoned their food and water while making it impossible for individuals to get an education or make enough money ever to become independent. To restore the rights of individuals, progressives of both parties reversed the idea that liberalism required a small government. They insisted that individuals needed a big government to protect them from the excesses and powerful industrialists of the modern world. Under the new governmental system that Theodore Roosevelt pioneered, the government cleaned up the sewage systems and tenements in cities, protected public lands, invested in public health and education, raised taxes, and called for universal health insurance, all to protect the ability of individuals to live freely without being crushed by outside influences. Reformers sought, as Roosevelt said, to return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” It is that system of government’s protection of the individual in the face of the stresses of the modern world that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and the presidents who followed them until 1981 embraced. The post–World War II liberal consensus was the American recognition that protecting the rights of individuals in the modern era required not a weak government but a strong one. When Movement Conservatives convinced followers to redefine “liberal” as an epithet rather than a reflection of the nation’s quest to defend the rights of individuals—which was quite deliberate—they undermined the central principle of the United States of America. In its place, they resurrected the ideology of the world the American Founders rejected, a world in which an impoverished majority suffers under the rule of a powerful few. — Notes: Megan Slack, “From the Archives: President Teddy Roosevelt's New Nationalism Speech,” December 6, 2011, The White House, President Barack Obama, National Archives, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/12/06/archives-president-teddy-roosevelts-new-nationalism-speech Theodore Roosevelt, “The New Nationalism,” in The New Nationalism (New York: The Outlook Company, 1910), 3–33. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority/595504/ Bluesky: You’re currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. If you need help receiving Letters, changing your email address, or unsubscribing, please visit our Support FAQ. You can also submit a help request directly. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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The New Matt Gaetz
It’s tempting to look at Trump’s announcement that he will appoint Kash Patel to be director of the FBI as just another attempt at trolling. Trump loves drama. Patel comes with a lot of baggage and so many detractors that much of the initial reaction is that he is not confirmable in the Senate. It’s hard to believe Trump would nominate Patel just to watch him lose in hopes of appointing him to be the deputy director, a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. For one thing, the confirmation battle is likely to be bruising, and Patel may end up like Gaetz, making videos on Cameo for $500 a pop. It would be a bad look to lose a second major nominee for the Justice Department. But January, when confirmations start, is a long way off, and there is still the matter of the current Director of the FBI, Chris Wray, who is midway through the 10-year term Trump appointed him to. Wray will have to either resign or be fired before a Patel nomination would be in play. It’s hard to fathom what Trump’s end game—if he has one—is here. Kash Patel is a former public defender who worked in DOJ’s National Security Division for a time. That means he’s in the category of people who should know better and who understand how the rule of law works. But last year, Patel told Steve Bannon, who has been one of his big supporters, that they could get “rolling on prosecutions” by putting in “all American patriots top to bottom” and find conspirators in government and the media who he says helped President Biden rig elections. He talked about both criminal prosecutions and civil actions against folks he apparently considers enemies.
Trump Attorney General Bill Barr rejected Patel for a possible role as deputy director of the FBI, telling Trump’s then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Patel would be appointed over “my dead body.”
An article in the Atlantic last summer characterized Patel as someone who was viewed as dangerous in the eyes of other Trump administration officials: “Patel was dangerous, several of them told me, not because of a certain plan he would be poised to carry out if given control of the CIA or FBI, but because he appeared to have no plan at all—his priorities today always subject to a mercurial president’s wishes tomorrow.” It is a lack of judgment coupled with inexperience that creates a perfect storm of susceptibility to Trump’s whims. You wouldn’t take a lawyer with just a few years of experience as a line prosecutor and put them in charge of their division at DOJ, let alone the FBI. But Patel appears to be precisely what Trump wants, a no-questions-asked loyalist. The Atlantic article is full of insight into Patel, if you find yourself with time to spare Sunday morning. One point among many: the author writes that “many of the nearly forty” of Patel’s former Trump Administration colleagues she spoke with for the piece would only do so if they could remain anonymous because they feared retaliation.
The key, predictably, seems to be Patel’s loyalty to Trump. As the FBI geared up to investigate Trump’s retention of classified documents in 2022, it was Patel who floated the story that he was present when Trump verbally declassified scores of documents before he left the White House. That was the line of defense that Trump ultimately picked up on, despite officials who said they were unaware of any such order. This, of course, led to Patel becoming a witness. In his first appearance before the grand jury, Patel took the Fifth. Subsequently, DOJ compelled his testimony with a grant of “use immunity,” which meant his testimony couldn’t be used against him, forcing him to testify because he no longer had a Fifth Amendment privilege to assert. Patel made it clear when he appeared before the grand jury this time that his appearance wasn’t voluntary and he had not made a deal with the Justice Department to testify against Trump. He remained a staunch critic of the classified documents case. It was in this maelstrom that Patel was asked on far-right host Benny Johnson’s podcast whether he would agree to be Trump’s FBI Director if Trump won in 2024. Patel responded that he was “all in with the boss.” Apparently, he still is. In announcing Patel’s selection on Truth Social, Trump acknowledged that Patel is a fervent believer in the “deep state,” writing, “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.” Earlier this month, Patel said, “I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I'd take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.” All in all, not a choice designed to inspire confidence that the FBI will be able to focus on its mission or that their new director would have the respect of the men and women the country depends upon to keep them safe. Trump has thrown down another gauntlet to the Senate. Their answer must be no. Kash Patel cannot be put in charge of the FBI any more than Matt Gaetz could be put in charge of the Justice Department. Once more, we watch to see whether the Senate will do its constitutional duty or whether the Senate will bend the knee. We’re in this together, Joyce You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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