Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
How I Might Be Wrong
On Thursday night, I posted an appeal to Never Trumpers, arguing that they should hold their noses and vote for the slimeball. The heart of my argument was the following claim — which I once again urge you to ponder:
The real issue is whether in the future we will have open discussion of political issues and free elections. Think about what we have now — a federal bureaucracy that is fiercely partisan. An IRS that tries to regulate speech by denying on a partisan basis tax-exempt status to conservative organizations. A Department of State that hides the fact that its head is not observing the rules to which everyone else is held concerning security of communications and that colludes with a Presidential campaign to prevent the release of embarrassing information. A Department of Justice that ought to be renamed as the Department of Injustice, which does its level best to suppress investigations that might embarrass the likely nominee of the Democratic Party. An assistant attorney general that gives a “heads up” to that lady’s campaign. An Attorney General who meets on the sly with her husband shortly before the decision is made whether she is to be indicted. A federal department that promotes racial strife and hostility to the police in the interests of solidifying for the Democrats the African-American vote.
Think about what else we have now — a press corps that colludes with a campaign, allowing figures in the Clinton campaign to edit what they publish. Television reporters who send the questions apt to be asked at the presidential debates to one campaign. A media that is totally in the tank for one party, downplaying or suppressing news that might make trouble for that party, inventing false stories about the candidates nominated by the other party, managing the news, manipulating the public, promoting in the party not favored the nomination of a clown, protecting the utterly corrupt nominee of the other party from scrutiny.
Let’s add to this the fact that the Democratic Party is intent on opening our borders and on signing up illegal aliens to vote. If you do not believe me, read what Wikileaks has revealed about the intentions of Tony Podesta. Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally change America.” He called his administration “The New Foundation.” Well, all that you have to do to achieve this is to alter the population.
To this, I can add something else. Freedom of speech is under attack. Forty-four Senators, all of them Democrats, voted not long ago for an amendment to the Constitution that would hem in the First Amendment. Ostensibly aimed at corporate speech, this would open the doors to the regulation of all speech. The Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission have pressed for regulating the internet — for treating blogposts as political contributions and restricting them. Members of the Civil Rights Commission have argued that freedom of speech and religious freedom must give way to social justice. There is an almost universal move on our college campuses to shut down dissent — among students, who must be afforded “safe spaces,” and, of course, in the classroom as well. There, academic freedom is a dead letter; and, in practice, despite the courts, in our public universities, the First Amendment does not apply.
We entered on a slippery slope some time ago when the legislatures passed and courts accepted laws against so-called “hate crimes” — that punished not only the deed but added further penalties for the thought. Now we are told that “hate speech” cannot be tolerated — which sounds fine until one realizes that what they have in mind rules out any discussion of subjects such as the propriety of same-sex marriage, sluttishness, and abortion; of the damage done African-American communities by irresponsible behavior on the part of fathers; and of the manner in which Islam, insofar as it is a religion of holy law, may be incompatible with liberal democracy. If you do not think that a discussion of these matters is off limits, you are, as the Democratic nominee put it not long ago, “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.” You are “deplorable and irredeemable.” You are, as she said this week, “negative, dark, and divisive with a dangerous vision.” It is a short distance from demonization to suppression. And, let’s face it, the suppression has begun — in our newspapers, on television, on our campuses, on Facebook, on Reddit, in Google searches.
One more point. The courts are now partisan. Thanks to Barack Obama’s appointees, in many parts of the country, the circuit courts have ruled out expecting people to present picture IDs when they vote. Elsewhere — for example, in Michigan — the circuit courts have ruled out eliminating straight-line party voting. All of this is aimed at partisan advantage — at making voter fraud easy and at encouraging straight-line voting on the part of those not literate in English. Who knows what the courts will do if the Democrats can get a commanding majority on the Supreme Court? We have already had all sorts of madness shoved down our throats by those who legislate from the bench. If you think that it has gone about as far as it goes, you do not know today’s Democratic Party. I doubt very much whether the Democrats will really try to shove through a constitutional amendment in effect revoking the protections extended to speech and religion in the First Amendment. That would be too controversial. They will do it, as they have done many other things, through the courts. Can we tolerate “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” speech — speech that is “deplorable and irredeemable,” that is “negative, dark, and divisive with a dangerous vision?” Surely, surely not. And this would be easy. If we can punish the “hate” in “hate crimes,” why not punish it or outlaw it in speech? All that you have to do is to “reinterpret” the First Amendment.
To the best of my knowledge, no one who commented on the piece I wrote challenged this judgment — which seems to me to make it a moral imperative that we vote to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming President. And much as I loathe Donald Trump, it seems to me that he is the only viable alternative.
There is, however, an argument on the other side that long gave me pause and still causes me to wonder whether my prudential calculations concerning the relative damage likely to be done by each of the only two viable candidates are correct. I regard trade policy, immigration, entitlement reform, abortion, kangaroo courts on campus, and a host of other matters of public policy as important. But we can go wrong on any of these matters and later correct course — as long as we can still have an open discussion of political issues and free elections. The reason I focused on the latter is that, if we go wrong on those matters, there is no road back short of revolution. If Hillary Clinton wins on Tuesday, the odds are good that she, her party, and their friends in the judiciary will shut the system down (as they already have in our universities). Whatever defects Donald Trump has (and they are legion), he will not do that; and, even if he wanted to, he would not be able to. Presidents, on their own, are not that powerful, and The Donald will be very much on his own.
But there is another matter of public policy where Trump might well go wrong and a correction of course might well prove impossible. I have in mind foreign policy. Just as I know and like a number of individuals who are over-the-top admirers of The Donald, so I know conservatives who are, I suspect, apt to vote for Hillary on Tuesday. Those within this cohort whom I most respect make the following argument:
Our nation confronts a revanchist Russia; a bellicose, expansionist China; terrorism in Europe; and civil war in the Middle East — in short, a world reeling at the edge of chaos. The president’s first responsibilities are to maintain national security, advance our national interests in foreign affairs and provide direction for the military. As Alexander Hamilton observed, the framers of the Constitution vested the executive power in one person, the president, to ensure that the United States could conduct its foreign relations with “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch.”
Faced with mounting international instability, Trump’s answer is to promise an unpredictable and unreliable America. He has proposed breaking U.S. commitments to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, closing our military bases in Japan and South Korea, repudiating security guarantees to NATO allies, pulling out of the Middle East, and ceding Eastern Europe to Russia and East Asia to China. A Trump presidency invites a cascade of global crises. Constitutional order will not thrive at home in a world beset by threats and disorder.
I am quoting from an oped published in The Los Angeles Times on 16 August by Jeremy Rabkin and John Yoo. I would urge that you read the whole thing. It is cogent.
Over the last seventy-five years, the United States spent lives and treasure to construct a world order within which we could live and trade in relative safety. That order, which has contributed mightily to our prosperity, was built by men and women educated by the disaster to which our isolationist policies in the 1920s and 1930s gave rise. They understood what “a cascade of global crises” and “a world beset by threats and disorder” could produce. I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War, and I lived the first forty years of my life during the Cold War. The current generation — well represented by our current President — have forgotten just how fragile the international order is. In Europe right now and in the Pacific — thanks in large part to Barack Obama — that order is rapidly coming apart. The last time this happened it cost us hundreds of thousands of lives and treasure beyond imagination. This time, if this happens, it will be worse.
Donald Trump is not a man of ideas. He has impulses and attitudes — some of them sound, many of them foolish — and he is profoundly ignorant. Over the course of this campaign, he has said a great many things that are dangerous. Jeremy, John, and others fear that his foreign policy would make that of Barack Obama look good. I cannot tell you that I regard their assessment of this likelihood as absurd, but I can say this. If their fears are justified, then — despite everything else that I said in my post on Thursday evening — you would be right in voting for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. For she is a known quantity. In its basic outlines, her foreign policy would be a continuation of the foreign policy we have followed since December, 1941.
I do not mean to say that she will not make mistakes. The lady has never done anything well in her life. Do I need to mention her service on the Watergate investigative staff, her handling of Hillarycare and the Russian reset, not to mention the Benghazi Bungle? I merely mean to say that she would not throw away everything that we have gained in the way of a framework guaranteeing our security and that of our commerce and that there are reasons to fear that he might do that very thing.
Why, then, do I still urge you to set aside the disgust that Donald Trump inspires and to vote for the creep?
One reason — and I very well might be wrong in my judgment. I discount the man’s wilder flailings. He is an entertainer — a reality show dramatist — and he is very good at venting the frustrations that have many of our fellow citizens in their grip. I doubt that he is serious in what he says in these offhand remarks. There are two signs. He has indicated an interest in making John Bolton Secretary of State, and he gave a speech on foreign affairs at Gettysburg not long ago that was positively sane. I have heard it praised to the skies by Trump partisans. That I think ridiculous. All that I am asserting is that it was not off the wall — and that is sufficient for me. But I will readily admit that Jeremy, John, and the others who share their opinion might be right. There is no safe choice this year. Whatever you do on Tuesday you will be rolling the dice.
One final point. On Tuesday, you will not be getting married; you will not be choosing a pastor; you will not be joining a church; and you will not be choosing a hero. You will not be doing anything that might leave you with morally dirty or morally clean hands. You will be doing something much more prosaic — something akin to hiring someone to mow your lawn. You will be hiring someone to do for you what you do not have the time or the other resources to do for yourself. And, just as you customarily do when you hire someone to mow the lawn, you should — in this situation also — prudently calculate which of the candidates for the job will do the least damage and the most good. That is the way Jeremy and John approach the question, and that is the way I approach the question. The fact that we disagree is a sign that this year there are powerful arguments on both sides. Thanks to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the hapless Republicans in the Senate and House, we now live in very dangerous times — times dangerous for our republic, as I argue; and times dangerous for our nation, as Jeremy and John argue.
You can, of course, turn your back on the whole thing — you can stay home or line up with Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Evan McMullin. That would, however, be a cop-out. It might make you feel good about yourself, but this feeling of self-satisfaction would be false and unjustified. For to throw your vote away in a time of national crisis is to dodge your duty as a citizen — which is to do what you can to make the best of the situation you find yourself in. What that is . . . there lies the rub.
Published in Politics
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
I hold with those who favor fire.
But I think I know enough
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
– with apologies to Robert Frost
Yes, if you think that she would be less damaging than Trump. This is a matter of prudential calculation, and some intelligent conservatives think he is more dangerous. I do not, but I could easily be wrong.
The pertinent situation is what each is likely to accomplish if elected. She has an agenda; her party has an agenda. They already control the circuit courts. All that it takes to shut things down is the Supreme Court. He has no real agenda, and he does not have a party that will in lockstep back him. The pertinent situation is the overall political situation. Focus on that and then consider what the man is likely to want to do and what he is likely to be able to do.
His treatment of women proves you wrong. More could be said about his conduct as a businessman and about his constant lying and his propensity to lash out at critics with schoolboy taunts. As a human being, he is every bit as bad as Bill Clinton. In some ways, he is worse.
Sad thing is that either way we must rely on Republicans in Congress doing their part and blocking either the agenda of the left or whatever Trump dreams up once the power goes to his head, and those same Republicans were the reason cited most often for why we need (or deserve) Trump in the first place.
This whole thing feels like being in a car that is going to collide with something and my options are yanking the wheel to make the hit more solid or depressing the accelerator to make it more forceful. Why is just screaming not an option?
It is amoral to refuse to take responsibility. You can make a gesture by not voting or throwing away your vote. In doing so, however, you are refusing to face up to the choice that is available. Damage will be done. The proper question is: which of the two will do more damage? You want clean hands. By dodging responsibility, you will dirty your hands.
This is moralism, not morality. You want clean hands — and so you refuse to ask which of the two will do less harm. It is irresponsible.
This isn’t the pertinent situation actually but you’ve helped me understand why we find ourselves in opposition. I’ll post about it after you guys vote.
That is what people said about Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and look where we are now. There is a difference between the Democratic Party of FDR, McGovern, and Carter and the Democratic Party of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They upheld the First Amendment. They did not seek to bring an end to freedom of speech. Re-read what I wrote about what has already happened. Then extrapolate.
Your argument is cogent, alas. I have not written (yet) about the millennial generation and its attitudes regarding democracy and free speech, but you have touched on something vital. The demographic tide is against us.
What we can hope for from a Trump administration is a delay of sentence, an opportunity to regroup, and a chance to educate the young Americans who are increasingly going astray. If Hillary gets in and the Democrats accomplish what they have in the clearest possible terms indicated they want to do, that demographic tide will reinforce what they have done and swamp the rest of us.
We are in a much more dangerous situation than many of our members suppose, and the choice was have to make is appalling. I understand all too well why some on this website recoil in disgust and loathing. But we have a duty to ponder the likely consequences of the election of each of these two people.
I submit to you that Woodrow Wilson was worse than Obama and Clinton. But yet we survived as a nation.
We’ll have to disagree. I’d rather see Hillary take down the Democrat party than Trump take down ours.
Isn’t the essence of morality to not commit evil, even when being pressed by circumstances toward doing so? If Trump is everything you say he is (and I have no reason to think otherwise) then I see no moral way to actively participate in empowering him. Even if I ask which will merely do an acceptable level of harm the answer is neither.
You’re asked several times about allying with Stalin. I’ve been contemplating that, and I think the better question would be if we’d elect Stalin to remove Hitler. Perhaps yes, but I don’t know that Hillary rises to that level of inherent evil, except on the abortion question, and Trump is a wild card on that one as well.
Your analogy is apt, and screaming while you yank the wheel would be appropriate.
So your post didn’t convince people the first time, so you just decided to post it again?
In a perfect world, in the government designed by our founders, the problems presented by Yoo and Rabkin would be the only consideration because the executive is not constitutionally empowered to be this much of a domestic hazard.
So… Rahe… You’re telling me I ought to, between now and Tuesday, find a way to fraudulently vote in a swing state?
Because where I live, voting for any candidate is statistically “throwing my vote away”, and I know it, and therefore no way I am voting for either lead.
Yeah, that’s me. False, self-satisfied, smug, etc, etc. Any other virtue-signaling labels you’d like to hang on me. And I mean your virtue-signaling, not mine, at this point.
The essence of morality in politics is to try to achieve what is good and to avoid what is bad. That requires a prudential consideration of the consequences of the choices available to us. I know a lot of people who, out of an understandable disgust, long ago abandoned voting. In this race, one of the two is more dangerous than the other. My instinct is that Hillary is the more dangerous; others — highly respectable people — think the opposite. I wish that I knew which of us is right. But the one thing that I do know is that one really is worse than the other and that it is important to avoid the worse.
I think some of the difficulty in coming to agreement in this as a language barrier. When we start in with morality and prudence you are speaking in Catholic, but I am hearing in Protestant.
I do know of an address in the state of Michigan I might be able to fraudulently vote from… Maybe…
I’m not sure, though, given that I’ve never done that before since it’s never been my duty before. Apparently.
Admittedly, Michigan isn’t sure to swing, but the odds of a Trump victory are at least an order of magnitude bigger there, which is something I suppose.
No, I would not suggest that you break the law. And if you are in a state where your vote will make no difference, I would think it appropriate for you not to vote or to make a moral gesture. If you live in such a state, you are not in fact confronted with a choice.
And I am not engaging in virtue-signaling of any kind. I am merely making an argument about our responsibilities as citizens, and I am making a prudential argument about the two candidates who are contenders. I am also pointing out where and how my prudential argument might be wrong.
We are in danger in various ways, and we will not find our way out of danger if we do not think clearly and prudentially about this election and other matters. If you are engaged in prudential deliberation about what to do, I praise you. If you have the opportunity to make a difference and choose to make an empty gesture instead, I would urge you to rethink your responsibilities.
Thank you. I have.
I thought so. Sometime, perhaps, we could go back and forth on the best way to fight abortion — whether, for example, to accept half a loaf with an eye to getting a full loaf later or to insist on the full loaf now, knowing that one will get nothing. I am told by an evangelical friend who works sometimes with Focus on the Family that most evangelicals lean to the latter position. We Catholics tend to be Aristotelian in our understanding of politics. Half a loaf will do . . . for now.
I can’t help thinking of this in response, or maybe affirmation? In any case some comic relief as an interlude in the debate:
The first one convinced most people. I reposted in order to raise questions about the validity of my argument. I reposted in order to try to do justice to the likes of John Yoo and Jeremy Rabkin. No one thus far has taken up that theme.
I don’t care one whit about either party. I care about the country.
Most of who? Commenters? Ricochet? The world?
How did you arrive at your conclusion?
@paulrahe , Thank you so much for your many thoughts on the choices we face this election and also your many answers to everyone.
I stand with you in believing we have no time to wait for future election possibilities. We are already in the quick sand. Hillary respects no law but her own and her party will be only to happy to accommodate her. Our Republican congress will roll over for her as they have done for this last administration.
It is very frustrating that so many focus on their personal feelings or their parties future rather than looking at the bigger picture of the fate of our country, its rule of law, free speech and liberty. We have no future, be it party or personal, without our countries freedoms.
John Bolton for sectary of state would certainly be fine by me.
Thank you again Dr. Rahe for your dedication.
This is one of those rare areas where I can get behind “if it only saves one child…”
The Catholic brothers and sisters here have done yeoman’s work in educating me on this and other topics. I can, alas, be both thick and stubborn, so their patience is always much appreciated.
So do I… and I believe a strong conservative movement is the best way to save our country. But electing Trump will ruin the conservative movement. Future voters will associate his brand with conservatism. Therefore I do not want him elected. I will wait for 2020.
On Yoo and Rabkin, are they basically arguing that Hillary is bad but remains abhorrent within normal parameters and is therefore less of a threat than Trump who is abhorrent beyond measure? She’s dangerous but in predictable and opposable ways, but Trump’s unpredictability would leave us always playing catch up with his crazy?
For me that doesn’t reach the level of hazard necessary to affirmatively vote for her, but it does solidify my conviction that voting for him is not appropriate either.