Historians Warn Biden: Democracy Teetering

This is the least helpful piece that the journalists could have easily written about this, and the most flattering thing I have ever read about Joe Biden.

President Biden paused last week, during one of the busiest stretches of his presidency, for a nearly two-hour private history lesson from a group of academics who raised alarms about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad.

The conversation during a ferocious lightning storm on Aug. 4 unfolded as a sort of Socratic dialogue between the commander in chief and a select group of scholars, who painted the current moment as among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governance[.]

What I would love to have heard is exactly how this 'Socratic dialogue' went: what arguments were made, what counterarguments (if any), which historians were on what side and what they thought specifically. Instead we get "Comparisons were made...." but not by whom or what exactly the comparisons were, other than vaguely that they were to the 1860 period around Lincoln's election and the pre-WWII fascist period.

We do eventually get a list of attendees, from which much can be extrapolated: 

Biden’s occasional speechwriter Jon Meacham, journalist Anne Applebaum, Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, University of Virginia historian Allida Black and presidential historian Michael Beschloss. White House senior adviser Anita Dunn and head speechwriter Vinay Reddy also sat at the table.

That doesn't sound like a Socratic dialogue, except insofar as you mean some of those conversations in which Socrates' interlocutor just says, "Yes, Socrates," and "You're right, Socrates" all through the thing. 

What we are apparently meant to take away from this is less an understanding of the debate -- if it was a debate -- and more an appreciation that Biden is an unusually intelligent president who is capable of carrying on a lengthy discussion with intellectual experts on the subject. Also, that he is more likely than other presidents (especially, of course, Trump) to take time to consult The Wise about his course -- though while always maintaining control and direction, of course.

Democrats broadly expect the same ideas will anchor Biden’s reelection campaign, if he decides to move forward with one, especially if Trump is his opponent again.

Biden has continued to bring up such themes in his public speeches, most recently in a July address to a law enforcement group, where he criticized Trump for taking no immediate action as the rioters he had inspired attacked the U.S. Capitol...

“You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy,” Biden told the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”

News to General Washington, I suppose. But he was not invited, no more than Jefferson nor Patrick Henry.

You don't have to go back that far, either. His own President Obama backed insurrections in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere precisely on the theory that it was pro-democracy to do so. They took groups off the State Department's terrorist list -- especially in Libya, where they still remain in the warring faction calling itself the 'Government of National Accord,' which name is an obvious lie given the continuing civil war. This collection of allegedly pro-democracy insurgencies was called the Arab Spring, and it was a monumental failure; but I don't get the sense that he is rejecting that model based on reflection on the history. For one thing, he has made no acknowledgement of the unwisdom of his predecessor and former boss, nor his participation in those efforts.

The Right can meme

Suzi Quatro

In one of those internet rabbit holes one sometimes explores, I discovered that Joan Jett in her initial fame as a member of the Runaways described herself as idolizing Suzi Quatro. Now Joan Jett I have known of since I was a youth myself, but I had never heard of Suzi Quatro. 

Well, she's no Joan Jett, but everything has to start somewhere. For whatever role she played in making Joan Jett and the Blackhearts happen, I am grateful. 

"Restoring the Right to Keep and Bear Arms"

This is the title of David Kopel's latest academic paper (h/t InstaPundit). I'm reading it this morning, and it's quite interesting. My own view of the right to keep and bear arms, and of the Second Amendment, is chiefly philosophical; Kopel understands the legal history quite precisely, having participated in much of it in the last few decades. 

Starting in 1989, the Court began occasionally to take cases that vindicated the rights of gun owners—but always on grounds other than the Second Amendment.4 One such case was 1997’s Printz v. United States. Back in 1993, Congress had enacted a statute ordering local law enforcement officials to carry out background checks on handgun buyers. Sheriffs around the nation sued, arguing that Congress had no power to dragoon local officials into enforcing congressional statutes. If Congress wanted background checks, it could hire federal employees to conduct the checks.

By 5-4, the Supreme Court agreed, with Justice Thomas joining Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion. While Printz was about federalism, not the Second Amendment, Justice Thomas wrote a briefing concurring opinion to point out the Second Amendment issue. He was dubious that the 1993 statute was compliant with the Second Amendment.... he wrote: “Perhaps, at some future date, this Court will have the opportunity to determine whether Justice Story was correct when he wrote that the right to bear arms ‘has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.’”

In those days there was a strong sense in the establishment that the Second Amendment was like the Ninth or Tenth, something that had been voided by the silent artillery of time. It took decades of disciplined pursuit of good arguments and the developing of thinkers who would rise to be lawyers, judges, and yes philosophers, to restore it to a right that the nation's courts take seriously and apply vigorously.  

That work must continue. As he points out, even a SCOTUS victory does not guarantee that other judges will undermine the decision. This violates their oaths, but they did it anyway:

Most of the lower federal courts adopted the test that Justice Stephen Breyer had proposed in his dissent in Heller, and which had specifically been repudiated by the Heller majority. 

Likewise there was a SCOTUS majority, it turns out, for not taking any gun cases until Ginsberg's death and replacement. Roberts was against it too.

By the end there is a useful meditation on what limits to the Second Amendment may still be enacted under the current decision, and which sorts may not be.

It's All in Your Imagination

People love to write these stories; Glenn Reynolds likes to say that when Republicans screw up, that's the story, but when Democrats do it's the Republican reaction that is the story. What's interesting to me is the intrusion into ostensible straight-news of editorial commentary.

Extremist organizers have tried to hold on to the momentum they built in recent years by finding big-tent causes disparate factions could rally around, such as opposition to pandemic restrictions, “Stop the Steal” election denial, or an imagined socialist “indoctrination” of schoolchildren. 

It's a weird line to walk: "these extremists have millions of followers." How extreme can you be if six million people agree with you enough to watch your podcast every day? I don't, myself, watch "Louder with Crowder," because it's not my kind of thing. But I don't have six million followers; I don't have a thousand. My way of approaching things is far less mainstream (and consequently more extreme if 'extremity' means 'far from the mainstream') than his.  He's doing what lots of other people do successfully: raising the drama level as a way to gain attention. It works because lots of people, ordinary people, like that approach. Heck, this very piece is an example of trying to do the same thing from the left.

An immediate concern is the safety of the federal judge in Florida who approved the search warrant. Once his name made its way to right-wing forums, threats and conspiracy theories soon followed. Online pro-Trump groups spread his contact information and, as of Tuesday afternoon, the judge’s official page was no longer accessible on the court’s website.

That's unprecedented, except by Jane's Revenge doing the same thing to the Supreme Court's right wing justices, who now have loud angry protests outside their homes more or less daily.

In mainstream GOP quarters, extremism trackers say, the nudges toward violence are more subtle, with statements delegitimizing the government as a “police state” or a “banana republic” that must be opposed, starting with the dismantling of federal agencies.

That's a mainstream view now? Good to hear.

Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted “DEFUND THE FBI!!” She added an image of an upside-down U.S. flag, which many on the right have embraced as a symbol of the nation in distress.

US Federal Law defines the upside-down flag as a dire distress symbol, but ok. (§8a) At least she's not burning it, like her counterparts on the other side.

A recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that about 1 in 3 Americans say they believe violence against the government can at times be justified, the largest share to feel that way in more than two decades.

As we have discussed here before, there is no way of reading of the Declaration of Independence without outright rejecting it that does not accept that violence against the government is sometimes justified. The opening sections are a philosophical defense of the idea that citizens can have the right, and occasionally the duty, to set aside a government and replace it with a better one.

By all means temper your rhetoric and think things through. Open your eyes, though: this isn't a one-sided thing, and distrust of this process can be rational and considered as well.

Jury Acquits Jarheads MC Killer of all Charges

Three years ago, a group of Jarheads Motorcycle Club members were struck by a truck, killing seven of them. Yesterday the man who killed them was acquitted of all charges by a jury of his peers. [The NYT wrongly describes the Jarheads MC as a group of "ex-Marines," which is wrong. They were former Marines. "Ex-Marine" generally refers to someone who was discharged other than honorably.]

It sounds like witness statements differed so substantially that there was room for reasonable doubt, which is the legal standard for acquittal. However, there was also a substantial assist from the judge: 

A report from the National Transportation Safety Board released in December 2020 found that on the day of the crash, Mr. Zhukovskyy had been “impaired by several drugs,” including heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. He was working for Westfield Transport, a trucking company, at the time and was driving to Albany, N.Y., and Gorham, according to court records.

Mr. Zhukovskyy also had a suspended license in Connecticut, which should have led the Registry of Motor Vehicles in Massachusetts to revoke his license, the report said....

Last week, Judge Peter H. Bornstein of Superior Court dismissed eight charges that were related to Mr. Zhukovskyy’s drug and alcohol intake at the time of the crash, saying in court that “there is simply insufficient evidence from which a jury can find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was impaired to a degree.”

If the jury found that he was driving while impaired, then the other counts would have been easy to convict upon. Since they were ordered not to consider that, and had only widely different witness statements to go upon, this result followed.

Rendering Honors

Today in Jackson County they are laying to rest a senior deputy, Sean Bryson, who died after a lengthy illness. There was a special detail to convey his body from Raleigh back to Jackson County for interment. I am told that public safety units, especially police but also fire and rescue, escorted the detail from the time it entered their county  until they handed it off to the next escort at the next county line. 

My son and I did not know him, so we are holding down our fire district so that the others who did could go and participate. This could have gone badly -- it's been a whirlwind few days here, with two structure fires over the last couple of days and a helicopter medivac this morning. Fortunately so far the funeral escort period has been quiet; let's hope it continues.

It is almost six years to the day since we had such a detail for my father. I was not then a firefighter; that came after, during the pandemic. Honor holds the world together. As Aristotle tells us, honor is the guide that shows even the virtuous how to live in the best and highest way.

This Is Fine

 

Trump says Mar-a-Lago home in Florida 'under siege' by FBI agents

This is a provocation. They are trying to get a reaction that allows a further crackdown.

And today's award for uncanny prescience goes to Joy Pullman, who this morning published the following:

The FBI And DOJ Criminalizing Opposition To The Regime Is How The Republic Ends

UPDATES: 8/9/22

Justice Department should have subpoenaed documents, not raided Trump’s home

by Alan Dershowitz

... it is now up to the Justice Department and the FBI to justify their actions to the American public. They must explain why a different standard appears to have been applied to Democrats such as Clinton and Berger than to Republicans such as Trump and many of his associates.

Search Warrant Or Not, Americans Have No Reason To Believe The FBI Raid On Trump’s Florida Home Was Justified

FBI's Mar-a-Lago Raid Presents a Time for Choosing: The Regime, or America | Opinion

For an All-Politics View

Why the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago is a gift for Donald Trump's 2024 election bid

For an Alt-Reality View

The Mar-a-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn’t a Banana Republic

Finally, Donald Trump’s misdeeds are catching up with him

Fire at High Hampton

High Hampton is the name of a mountain above what is charmingly called 'the Cashiers Valley,' which is in fact atop a plateau on the Continental Divide. Just below the mountain is the location of a century-old resort, golf, and country club. Last night their clubhouse caught fire and burned, and this morning right about dawn we were sent as backup to the Glenville-Cashiers Fire Department which needed relief. 

The Fire Marshal came, and there will definitely be trouble about this one. For the most part, fires in this rural county are fought with tanker trucks because there is no such thing as a sewer or water system. In my fire district, we pull our water from free-flowing creeks and rivers in the Nantahala National Forest, or else from Bear or Wolf lake. Other places have different water points, but what nobody has are hydrants you can hook into. Nobody except High Hampton, which installed them as part of their bid to get better prices on insurance. Only last night the hydrants didn't work, and it proves to be because the resort shut them off. The hopeful explanation is that this was in order to increase water pressure to the hotel and homes in the community, as there has been less rain than usual (though it is pouring right now). The explanation that the insurance company is going to want to forward is that they were shut down on purpose to keep firefighters from saving this expensive building. 

I of course do not know the truth of such matters. I will say that the resort management were gracious hosts to the firefighting community. This was the first fire I have ever fought that was catered. They brought us large canisters of coffee, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, likewise fresh breakfast sandwiches -- buttered Texas toast, scrambled eggs, sausage, and cheese -- and lots of water and Gatorade. I didn't eat any cookies, but they looked delicious. Neither did I drink any coffee, as it was adequately warm fighting the fire in the August sun, but I was grateful for the water. 

Tragically during the mop-up I uncovered the remnants of the beer fridge, in which at least a thousand perfectly good beers were destroyed and reduced to steam. I'm told the tennis balls survived very well in their pressurized containers, however. Fortunately the fire appears to have harmed no human beings, nor any animals either as far as we could tell. 

Riding in the Rain

Firewood Work Continues

Yesterday I had occasion to look back at a bunch of old pictures from twenty years ago, trying to find a particular photo I remembered. I was struck by how much my life has followed the patterns I adopted in that period of adulthood. In my early twenties and teenage years I lived at home and went to school, and my father set the rhythm of our lives. By my mid-twenties, however, I had moved out and begun to explore things; I moved to Savannah in pursuit of a woman, married her, we went to grad school (her in fine arts, myself in history) and then moved to China and had adventures. After I returned, though, we settled down into a life that is recognizably similar to that which came afterwards.

This is true in spite of the fact that many major changes happened in the subsequent period. We had our son, I went to war (three times, once as a correspondent for the Long War Journal to the Special Operations Task Force - Philippines, and then twice to Iraq as a participant in the conflict). We moved many times, shifted from renting to owning a home, sold homes and moved twice more. I sought and obtained a doctorate in philosophy. I published books and many essays. My father died, I took up firefighting and wilderness rescue, I learned to ride a horse and rode almost every day for more than a year, I learned to ride motorcycles and still ride every day or nearly so.

Yet I see a clear picture of life in the pictures of me standing beside stacks of firewood, the pictures of me working on various trucks, and the pictures of me hiking or camping in the wilderness. Mostly the cold months have been heated with firewood, which is a rhythm of its own. We are a little behind this year due to a minor injury that kept me from starting for a couple of months. I prefer when wood is cut and split in the spring, cured through the summer and early autumn, and ready to warm you by Christmas. This year I am still splitting in August, though some of it has been split since May. For about a quarter of each year one is bucking wood some days and splitting on others. Today my now-adult son and I split some fine straight-grained red oak, and it will burn beautifully in the cold months.

The trucks always need work, too; it's always one thing or another. Today I intend to change the coil pack on my Jeep, which still has a cylinder that is firing improperly in spite of new plugs and plug wires. My Ford is having powertrain issues that are computer- and sensor-related. I can diagnose those with an OBD-II cord and my laptop, which is new. I've changed two tires in the last few weeks, oil and filters also. 

And always there are the mountains, which with one exception our moves have kept us as close to as possible. Now we are right up among them. The air is clean and the people are fewer. Wild animals make better neighbors, both because they are less offensive and because you can always eat them if they ever do become a problem. 

SCOTUS as Arms Race

Both sides are scrambling to secure the court, reports MSN. The piece opens with a stunning admission.

Heaven was so close Mark Tushnet could feel the years rolling off him.

Tushnet was a 70-year-old Harvard Law professor in 2016, but he evinced the youthful zeal of a Harvard undergraduate when he published a manifesto that May encouraging his fellow progressives to start imagining the possibilities of a reinvigorated progressive jurisprudence that would be ushered in by Hillary Clinton. Adverse precedents “overruled at the first opportunity.” Judicial nominees in the mold of Thurgood Marshall. Defeated social conservatives treated like the losers in World War II. The days of “looking over [your] shoulders” in fear of the conservative bogeyman are over, he exhorted. The time for “abandoning defensive crouch liberal constitutionalism,” as he titled his blog post, had come.

Treating your fellow Americans as conquered enemies, yes, obviously. In the present moment, with the left in such high dudgeon about 'overturning stare decisis,' it is amazing to see in print an admission that a top priority was to "overrule [disfavored precedents] at the first opportunity.' That's Heller, at least, as core a decision for the other side as Roe was for theirs. 

All this in defense of a move to 'abandon... liberal constitutionalism.' If you are willing to abandon liberal constitutionalism from the left, what you mean is that you are abandoning constitutionalism. 

These moves aim at pure power. They are antithetical to our tradition, and yet all I hear is talk of 'defending our democracy' and 'rule of law.' 

Soothing Propaganda

NPR reports that a third of Americans lack confidence in our election system, but that number can be reduced if one tells them soothing tales before asking the question.

The organization's research started with a control group of voters, and asked them whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: "Overall, I trust the process for counting votes in our elections."

Initially, 63% of voters said they did.

But when another group of voters was asked the same question after reading a statement that included things like "political candidates can challenge election results. But our system requires proof and following the law" and "let's keep improving our elections and make them more fair, equal, and transparent" that number went up to 72% of voters.

Now, if you watched how this actually went down in 2020-2021, you saw that the statement being presented to soothe voters' concerns is not accurate. Courts outright refused to hear the challenges raised by candidates on standing grounds, and therefore never examined evidence to see if there was proof. It turns out you can't challenge an election that hasn't taken place yet because you have no standing, having not yet suffered any harm. You can't challenge one that has taken place because it's too late now (laches). You can't challenge one once the votes are certified because the matter is already decided (moot).

A state government lacks standing to object to other states adopting fraudulent processes, because those other states are sovereign. The legislature of that same state lacks standing as well. The President of the United States lacks standing in his own election, and so does any legal interest group that might try.

This is true even when there is prima facie evidence such as in Atlanta; the courts found no one with standing, the Justice Department held no investigation, and all we got was a single guy testifying before the January 6th committee a year and a half later that he'd looked into it and everything was fine. That in no way constitutes a process for actually challenging an election in a way to do anything about it, even if you can show initial evidence that suggests there's reason to look deeply.

As for being able to challenge the election if one 'follows the law,' the Wisconsin Supreme Court found that its own election was illegal and unconstitutional -- but no challenges were heard in time to do anything about it. Nor will that small matter apparently affect the next election, which the executive branch is intending to run the same way regardless of the other two branches. Orders from the legislature are set aside, and the ruling of the court ignored, by an unelected committee appointed by the governor.

As a consequence, I find the NPR result depressing rather than reassuring. If just speaking some soothing but false words is enough to move the needle that much, many people don't really care. They just want the worrisome thing to go away, and are prepared to believe any calming narrative no matter how manifestly false it has proven to be.

Greetings, Fellow Extremists

I have both the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross flag hanging in my basement, along with a collection of other Revolutionary War flags. 

As I was saying at D29's place yesterday, it's really striking that they have added the ANCAP flag to this list of 'militant violent extremists.' "[ANCAPs] believe in the Nonaggression Principle. It’s a core value of the movement. The only way they’re a threat of violence is if you are the aggressor." 

Lawsuits and Referenda on Abortion

The fallout of Dobbs is that the issue moves back to the democratic branches, but also that executive actions to advance a favored position become important. The Justice Department is suing to block an Idaho law that they say does not adequately protect the lives of vulnerable women:

Garland said that while the law provides an exception in order to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, "it includes no exception for cases in which the abortion is necessary to prevent serious jeopardy to the woman's health."

I think there is both a genuine concern here and also a politically motivated move. On the one hand, there are reports that doctors are delaying carrying out an abortion up until the point that a woman's life is obviously and incontestably endangered even though it is obvious much earlier that this point is going to be reached. There is no reason to delay what is ultimately going to be necessary, making the woman run risks and suffer just to provide a blanket to protect doctors in court. Some women may risk dying or suffering irreparable harm over that, and it's not ultimately going to save the life of the child. It's pointless and either cruel or cowardly to push suffering onto the woman in order to protect the doctor's career. 

On the other hand, creating a broad exception will end up excusing a number of cases that are fringe or vague cases. This is clearly part of the intent, given that the real desire is to have abortion legal (and paid for by taxpayers) in all cases whatsoever. This is on the same principle Richard the Lionheart cited in assigning Friar Tuck his bucks:

“I understand thee,” said the King, “and the Holy Clerk shall have a grant of vert and venison in my woods of Warncliffe. Mark, however, I will but assign thee three bucks every season; but if that do not prove an apology for thy slaying thirty, I am no Christian knight nor true king.”

Even so, I'm inclined to view this as an acceptable solution. Even if they manage the tenfold increase of 'medically necessary' abortions that the King expected from the Friar and his bucks, genuinely necessary cases are estimated at two percent. (This figure is hotly contested by activists on both sides, in and out of 'expert' NGOs; but it is somewhere between less than one percent and maybe three percent.) If you get to twenty percent, that still is a vast improvement over where we were before Dobbs, as the remaining eighty percent will be capable of being regulated according to democratically-enacted law.

Meanwhile an anti-abortion referendum in Kansas of all places went down in flames yesterday. Returning the issue to democracy means accepting democratic results, and abortion is always very popular once people have had it for a while -- even Ireland is not likely to go back to banning it. It's just so convenient to be able to make a daunting 20-year challenge, which entails heavy responsibility and permanent physical changes to your own body, go away like it never existed. There's no guarantee of success without a lot of moral work to convince people to accept the arguments against the practice. You can't skip the philosophy and go straight to force: that's now how democracy works.

More Wiped Phones

Not just the Secret Service, now the Department of Defense appears to have wiped phone and text records of those responsible for deploying the National Guard on January 6th. Why the Guard was not deployed is a major question we've been asking here since before January 6th, and certainly since then -- it was obvious that there was a significant potential for disorder given the nearby mass rally to protest the very thing going on inside Congress right then. Finding out why the Capitol was left unprotected is going to be harder given this apparently intentional destruction of the relevant public records.

Yamaguchi

Japan is having a strange problem with its monkeys. For some reason this kind of thing doesn't happen in the USA; I assume the reason is related to the fact that they've had to hire specialists with tranquilizer guns to address the matter. This is the sort of job Americans would handle themselves. 

Against Public Education

 Quilette has an article on the challenges facing public education.

This past May, my community sought to fill four open school board seats.... It quickly became apparent that nearly all of the candidate platforms fit neatly into one of two distorted worldviews: either that of the MSNBC viewer or the Fox News viewer.... each platform simply revealed how little was understood about the real challenges facing public education and youth culture more broadly.

Last week we had a runoff election for the school board locally which mirrored this concern exactly. These are officially nonpartisan positions. Nevertheless, one candidate ran on rainbows and talk of 'equity' and 'school safety,' and she was backed by the local Democratic Party. The other one said nothing much about education, but a lot about Jesus. She was backed by the Republicans.

Rainbow lady won, but because she's the incumbent that means nothing will change. Recent graduates I know personally can't do math and lack basic English skills such as knowing the difference between "your" and "you're." The institution is an embarrassing failure. 

The Quilette piece suggests the problem is one of mental health among the youth. Maybe that's part of it; but part of it is the need to burn this institution of American public education to the ground, so that something more fertile can be grown upon its ashes.

End Run Around the Electoral College?

Andrew Morgan at the Federalist writes:

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted by 15 state legislatures plus Washington, D.C., and passed in 41 legislative chambers in 24 states. For the proposal to become the law of the land, enough states totaling at least 270 electoral votes would be required to enact the law, and states would then commit their electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes nationally, regardless of which candidate won at the state level.

The states that have enacted the compact represent 195 electoral votes: Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, California, New York, and the District of Columbia. States with passage in one chamber include Arkansas, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Successful passage in all of these states represents 283 electoral votes, enough to change the law and make our presidential election decided via popular vote rather than the Electoral College. 

Goodbye Uhura

She and we would have agreed partially at best, but she meant well and did well by her own lights. Goodnight, dear lady.