Senator Mitt Romney made history by breaking with his party to vote to convict President Trump. Romney presented a well-crafted and well-argued speech that contrasts dramatically with the style and content of Trump’s speeches. I have, as one would suspect, been somewhat critical of Romney over the years, but I have always endeavored to be fair to him. In 2011 I wrote in his defense when he was attacked for being a Mormon. I bring up these points to set what follows in context and as evidence that my current defense of Romney is not simply a matter of agreeing with him about Trump.
As should be expected by anyone familiar with my views, I think that Trump is guilty of the misdeeds he was impeached for and that he should have been removed from office. My defense of Romney is not, however, based on this agreement—this would be foolish. For those who agree that Trump should have been removed, no defense of Romney is needed. For those who think that Trump deserved his victory, there is no agreement with Romney.
In his speech, Romney argues why his vote was correct and he explains his reason for his vote. The gist of the explanation is that Romney believes that he took an oath before God and this morally and religiously obligated him. Because of his faith and his conscience, he could not break his oath and by following this oath, he was obligated to vote to convict Trump.
Romney is obviously right that he and the other 99 senators took an oath to do impartial justice. The key moral question is whether such an oath is morally binding or not. On the face of it, when one enters into an agreement without being forced or deceived, one is obligated to hold to that agreement. That is, you should keep your word and act in good faith. One could argue on utilitarian grounds that breaking an oath would be justified if the good of doing so outweighed the bad—an argument some Republican senators could perhaps make. This would be analogous to the usual utilitarian arguments about lying in general. Romney, however, invokes a non-utilitarian ethics: he appeals to his religious views.
As Romney presents it, his ethics is based primarily on his faith—he is a devout Mormon. Religious based ethics tend to be deontological. That is, they are generally based on moral rules that define actions as wrong and right, as opposed to weighing various consequences, be they pragmatic or utilitarian. The foundation for these rules is typically and obviously God—God either commands what is right or things are right because of his commands (divine command theory). While I do not know the details of Romney’s moral theory, it certainly seems that he embraces the deontological view: while voting with his fellow Republicans would have been advantageous and voting against them is damaging, he decided to act in accord with his conception of right and wrong. He lays out clearly in his speech his reasoning and, as noted above, there is no reasonable doubt about his faith. As such, the best explanation is the explanation he gave: in following his oath he was led to cast his vote as he did. But did he act correctly? In this matter I follow Aquinas.
As Aquinas saw it, the conscience is the rational activity of applying moral knowledge in particular cases and “every will at variance with reason, whether right or erring, is always evil.” Since people are not perfect, the are obligated to follow their informed conscience to the best of their ability. As such, people can fall into error due to having incorrect information as well as various defects in their conscience. Because of this possibility of error, Aquinas contends that when a person reaches the wrong moral conclusion, they should still be judged based in the extent to which they were guided by the moral light as they understood it. On this view, if a person chooses wrongly, but acted in accord with their ethics and did their due diligence about the relevant information, then they are to be judged accordingly.
Romney seems to have met these conditions: he considered the evidence before him, thought the matter through thoroughly and acted in accord with his long-held and long considered moral principles. As such, while one could disagree with his verdict, one cannot justly judge him as having acted wrongly in being guided by his informed moral conscience. This is not to say that being guided by one’s informed conscience excuses everything—one can presumably have an informed conscience that leads to terrible things.
I rather like Aquinas’ approach and endeavor to apply it consistently. This is one reason why I can get along with people with very different views and still regard them as good people: they make their decisions from an informed conscience and I am obligated to respect that they are making a real and serious effort to do what is right. As such, while I have often disagreed with Romney, I hold that he also endeavors to act from his informed conscience. Not everyone would agree with this.
While his senate colleagues have been somewhat restrained in their criticism, Trump and others have begun relentlessly attacking him. As would be expected, social media is now infested with attacks on Romney, including some rather vile ones. Trump tweeted a video in which it is claimed that Romney was a “Democrat secret asset.” He also attacked both Romney and Pelosi at the National Prayer Breakfast, mocking their references to faith. Trump and his worst supporters are not engaging with Romney’s arguments, they are merely launching ad hominem attacks on him. These, of course, have no moral or logical merit. One would hope that Trump’s attacks on the faiths of Romney and Pelosi would have some consequences among his Christian supporters—but Romney has often been attacked for being Mormon and being suspicious of Catholics has long been a thing in America.
Trump’s response is not surprising; Trump seems to lack an informed conscience and assesses matters in terms of their advantage to him. Other people are assessed in terms of their loyalty to him—the one virtue Trump seems to value in others, though he seems incapable of practicing it himself. As such, Trump did not and cannot accept that Romney acted in accord with his conscience—there is no room for the idea of principled disagreement. One is either loyal to Trump or not. Many of his followers also share this view and this helps contribute to polarization. It must be noted that this is not limited to Trump or his supporters; it is common to regard those who disagree as wicked without considering they might be acting in excellent accord with their own moral light. I see this among liberals as well, as one would expect.
As a philosophy professor I do try to convince my students that they can disagree with a person and still accept that they are not therefore wicked. I also try to convey the idea that people who act in accord with their informed conscience should be judged in this light. As far as why you should act this way, there is the golden rule. You are the hero of your story, but no doubt the villain in someone else’s. Since each of us is somebody’s villain, we should be willing to keep in mind that they think of themselves as we do: the hero. This should give us some reason to pause in demonizing others and to consider that though we disagree, they might not be wicked.
I guess I’m not surprised that Mike is giving Romney “strange new respect.” However, I still remember Mike’s posts from 2012 about what a terrible human being Romney is.
OK, but I’m not terribly impressed.
Reading around, I find that Mitt Romney has planted his flag firmly on both sides of many fences over the years. I do not consider this necessarily a bad thing, but it is clear that nobody expects him to toe a party line.
I also find that he gave pre-recorded interviews to The Usual Suspects – NYT, WaPo etc. – embargoed until he made his formal statement, and they all rushed to praise his courage. Romney is very rich, 72 years old with a guaranteed seat in the Senate for 4 more, and a long and successful career behind him. He was never going to run for President again. He has had an on-and-off spat with Trump for years. It was a surprise to exactly no-one that he voted against Trump. Where was the courage needed for this? He gets some great press in the MSM, some bad press from Fox, and maybe some smaller-scale aggro from some of his constituents .. and that’s about it. The other Senators are hardly going to put chewing gum in his hair in class. This was just Mitt Romney being Mitt Romney.
Also, his vote changed exactly nothing. If it had been pivotal, then he might have expected more lasting effects. As it is, I expect most people will have forgotten it in a month.
If he did indeed vote his conscience, good for him. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it, and I have no evidence to say otherwise. But given his record, I have to wonder whether he was partly influenced by his dislike of Trump, and the opportunity to cast himself as the Man Of Principle, torn between party loyalty and Doing The Right Thing, in the pages of the most high newspapers.
In his speech, he did make one substantive point I’m still thinking about. He said that, while the Bidens’ actions as we know them may have been “unsavoury” and “conflicted” and “very wrong”, the president had no evidence that an actual crime had been committed, and therefore the president’s request for an investigation was unfounded. And if that request was not based in his duty, there goes his defense, at least the one I would vote on. That’s not a suggestion that came up in the trial itself, AFAIK. I wonder why not?
Isn’t the violation of federal ethics guidelines enough to warrant an investigation?
This is where I’d need a US lawyer to answer.
Which guideline, exactly? What is the appropriate department to investigate it? I’m pretty sure that nobody would consider that foreign governments have jurisdiction to investigate US officials on the basis of US internal guidelines, so if that is the argument, what was Trump asking them to investigate?
Wouldn’t you have to go all the way to bribery or money laundering to find a crime that a foreign country could lay against a US VP? I honestly don’t know. Legals not my thing.
Bribery would do, of course. I read somewhere that Joe Biden said he didn’t know that his son was working for the #1 corruption target in the country for which he was the US lead for enforcing anti-corruption agreements, If that report is true, then there might be a case for almost unbelievable incompetence, but can you make a case for bribery?
When Hunter took the job at Burisma, Joe was obligated to recuse himself. This is Conflict of Interest Ethics 101.
Disqualification Required by Conflict of Interest Statute
A criminal conflict of interest statute, 18 U.S.C. § 208, prohibits an employee from participating personally and substantially, in an official capacity, in any “particular matter” that would have a direct and predictable effect on the employee’s own financial interests or on the financial interests of:
the employee’s spouse or minor child;
a general partner of a partnership in which the employee is a limited or general partner;
an organization in which the employee serves as an officer, director, trustee, general partner, or employee; or
a person with whom the employee is negotiating for or has an arrangement concerning prospective employment.
A “particular matter” is virtually any Government matter to which an employee might be assigned, including policy matters and matters involving specific parties, such as contracts or grants. (A few matters in Government, however, may be so broad in scope that the conflict of interest law does not require an employee’s disqualification even though the employee’s own or “imputed” financial interests are among those affected by the matter.) Disqualification (“recusal”) is mandatory in the circumstances specified in the statute. Moreover, disqualification is often the appropriate way to prevent a conflict of interest in the long term, unless an “exemption” applies or the circumstances warrant the use of other means of resolving the conflict of interest. Example: John owns stock in ABC Corporation when he joins Government. John may not work personally and substantially on any particular matter that would have a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of ABC Corporation unless an exemption applies or the potential conflict of interest is resolved in another way, such as by requiring John to sell the stock. /em>
https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/Resources/Employees+Entering+Government
And there is more, too:
Disqualification Warranted Due to Impartiality Concerns
An executive branch-wide regulation recognizes that a reasonable person may believe that an employee’s impartiality can be influenced by interests other than the employee’s own or those that are imputed to the employee by the conflict of interest laws. Under 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502, employees are required to consider whether their impartiality would be questioned whenever their involvement in a “particular matter involving specific parties” might affect certain personal or business relationships. The term “particular matter involving specific parties” refers to a subset of all “particular matters” and includes Government matters such as a contract, grant, permit, license, or loan. If a particular matter involving specific parties is likely to have a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of a member of the employee’s household, or if a person with whom the employee has a “covered relationship” is or represents a party to such matter, the employee must consider whether a reasonable person would question the employee’s impartiality in the matter. An employee has a covered relationship with:
a person with whom the employee has or seeks a business, contractual, or other financial relationship;
a person who is a member of the employee’s household or is a relative with whom the employee has a close personal relationship;
a person for whom the employee’s spouse, parent, or dependent child serves or seeks to serve as an officer, director, trustee, general partner, agent, attorney, consultant, contractor, or employee;
any person for whom the employee has within the last year served as an officer, director, trustee, general partner, agent, attorney, consultant, contractor, or employee; or
any organization (other than a political party) in which the employee is an active participant.
If the employee concludes that participation in such a matter would cause a reasonable person to question the employee’s impartiality, the employee should not work on the matter pending possible authorization from the appropriate agency official. Moreover, an employee should not work on any matter if the employee is concerned that circumstances other than those expressly described in the regulation would raise a question regarding the employee’s impartiality. The employee should follow agency procedures so that the agency can determine whether participation is appropriate. Example: Susan was president of XYZ Corporation until she joined the Government. Susan’s agency learns about her prior employment during the hiring process (and possibly from her financial disclosure report). The agency will decide if she should be disqualified for one year from some or all matters involving XYZ Corporation.
https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/Resources/Employees+Entering+Government
It is entirely possible that Joe and Hunter did nothing illegal. But there is certainly enough here to justify an investigation.
You get no argument from me: there is more than enough to justify the USA investigating.
But that’s not the question.
The question is: what justifies Ukraine investigating? What gives them jurisdiction?
Same essay:
“Trump’s response is not surprising; Trump seems to lack an informed conscience and assesses matters in terms of their advantage to him. Other people are assessed in terms of their loyalty to him—the one virtue Trump seems to value in others, though he seems incapable of practicing it himself.”
“As a philosophy professor I do try to convince my students that they can disagree with a person and still accept that they are not therefore wicked. ”
I’d really like to know Mike, how would you react if there was a CIA agent in your class, reporting your phone conversations to a political office? I’m sure you’d think it was all in good faith. They’re just doing their duty as a defender of the Republic. And this happens after the security state uses a dossier generated by a third party nation’s retired intelligence officer who used Russian sub-sources. We fear the fall of the Republic!
Some appropriate quotes:
Patrick Swayze, Roadhouse: “Be nice, until it’s time not to be nice”.
HL Menchen: “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
I think you should use tenure to say dangerous things, not shill for the Leftist establishment. What dangerous things are you writing? What dangerous things do you believe that you can’t write about because being liked and paid is better than just being paid?
With Romney, you were not just critical. You disparaged his religion. You acted just as Trump acts. This is the problem with moral philosophy and moral zealots in general. It is a road to utter hypocrisy, especially when grounded only in a materialist worldview.
St Paul wrote about this problem: “Traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power.
SJW/Postmodern Leftism: The moral philosophy of materialism.
IMNSHO, a very important, very telling moment regarding the history of Romney And The Left and the recent fawning over the bipartisan wisdom of his meaningless vote is the, “Hey, Mitt – the 1980’s called, they want their foreign policy back! HAHAHAHAHA.”
This ridicule was in response to Romney’s 2012 campaign declaration that Russia was, “without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe”.
In hindsight, and after the failure of the Clinton “Reset”, the sellout of US high-tech intellectual property in the building of the Skolkovo Innovation Center (which, along with Hillary Clinton’s private email servers allowed Putin access to US State Secrets), and the brazen and uncontested Russian expansion into and annexation of Crimea. (This was predicted as early as 2008 by John McCain in a debate with Barack Obama – which became a major campaign point in the same way as the 1980’s comment. When Sarah Palin echoed McCain’s warnings, there was an immediate spike in SNL viewership.)
And now, whether you choose to accept the premise or not, there is at least “tension” if not an outright hot war between Russia and Ukraine who seem to be in competition for who can influence US elections more, who can sway US opinion more with strategic Facebook campaigns, and who ends up with the billions of missing US dollars buried in political intrigue and a massive worldwide corruption scandal.
In support of the ridicule Romney received for his “geopolitical foe” comment, let’s not forget how Putin walked all over Obama in Syria, reducing the 2013 deal Obama crafted to nothing more than the paper it was written on, as Obama backed off his “red line” in the face of Putin’s support of the Assad regime.
In October of last year, CNBC published an article written by Frederick Kempe, a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of one of the United States’ most influential think tanks on global affairs. the Atlantic Council, with the headline, “A geopolitical earthquake has shaken US leadership in the world — Russia and China stand to benefit”
“What’s also clear is that those countries challenging American leadership most – China most profoundly and Russia with increasing intensity – see new opportunities to accelerate their gains in the face of a polarized and distracted Washington through November 2020 elections – and beyond.
From Syria to Ukraine, and from Afghanistan to Africa, the tectonic plates are shifting in a manner that threatens not only the credibility and durability of US global leadership but also the democratic values, the Western institutions and the alliance structures that it has inspired for the past seventy years and since World War II.
Vladimir Putin held a six-hour meeting with Turkish President Erdogan; he and Erdogan (who had recently bought the S-400 air defense system from Moscow in defiance of the West), talked about how they and other regional players would carve up control of Northeastern Syria to serve their interests.
It’s very easy to suddenly respect and embrace a guy like Romney for bucking the party line and casting a vote like he did – knowing full well that it would just be a public statement with no real consequence. But how far will this love affair go? Are Romney’s fans now willing to revisit the campaign of 2012 and walk back their ridicule? Are any of them willing to look back over the last ten years and consider where we might be today had they not just succumbed to partisan rancor and considered the reasons for his statement?
Kempe’s article is well detailed, well researched, and filled with support for his claim. There is certainly enough information here for anyone who is interested to successfully find the entire piece. But the most frustratingly salient point he makes is his conclusion:
“it’s time to recognize the fact that a geopolitical earthquake is under way. Its consequences will grow only greater the longer we are distracted by our own domestic political ferment and fail to respond with a seriousness and strategy that is equal to the challenge.”
For anyone who doesn’t get the point of that last statement, he’s talking about “Russia, Russia, Russia!” “Impeach the motherf**ker”, falling right into the Putin-orchestrated propaganda trap that has us fighting amongst ourselves over a long list of hate-fueled, overblown pseudo-issues built on our own internal struggle for power between two increasingly distant factions, both of whom have abandoned logic, reason, and any semblance of unity over our common interest in the United States of America.
Not a single politician expressed or even saw the larger picture regarding Russian or Ukraine interference in our election process. No one said, “This is our country, our election, our business.
BACK THE F*** OFF! No one saw this as a US issue (which would have fallen directly in Obama’s lap). They played us well, knowing that this would never rise to the level of a unified US retaliatory effort against Russia. Democrats accused Trump of collusion, Republicans said the same about Clinton and Biden, and here we are. Time and fortune spent on the Russia investigation that resulted in a conclusion that no Democrat will let themselves believe, but all Democrats put behind them to move on to the next effort to impeach.
Romney was right about a lot of things, but the Democrats were right about the big thing. “No one cares”. The US is much more entertained by Saturday Night Live and japes about “magic pajamas” than they are in developing any kind of geo-political awareness that would lend enough credence to statements like his to lead to an intelligent discussion and reasonable US foreign policy.
In 1858, US Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts nearly to death with his cane, over Sumner’s impassioned anti-slavery speech given a few days before. This act has been considered by historians as symbolic of the “breakdown of reasoned discourse” and the use of violence that eventually led to the American Civil War.
How far are we today from that reasoned discourse? How far are we from such a breakdown, one that future historians may consider as equally symbolic as a cause of the second and final American Civil War? And how gleefully would the likes of Putin, Xi Jinping, their successors and global rivals be to continue to contribute to the downfall of this country, strategically trying to position themselves on the side of the victor – which certainly won’t be any home-grown political party.
And at whose feet will these future historians lay the blame?
I don’t know about them, but for me, the blame will lie with Michael LaBossiere, and others like him.
Mike, you are an erudite, educated man with high academic credentials. You have the awesome responsibility of teaching young minds how to think for themselves, to employ classic logic and reasoning to complex problems, to consider factors that defy their own irrational emotional desires, to challenge populist thought with historical context, insightful social criticism, and critical, creative, ideation. Yet you merely pose as a “philosopher”, a doctor of letters whose credentials imply a certain level of respect, erroneously leading your readers to believe that “A Philosopher’s Blog” will contain insights and analyses that rise above the level of mere partisan talking points, that don’t allow themselves to descend into hate-filled rants, wherein the claims and omissions represent lies as great as those you attribute to the objects of your disgust. But in the end, we know what to expect here; we learn nothing, we see only a repetition of left-wing talking points with the possible attempt to chart these points in a symbolic diagram.
In this entry, you attempt to show yourself as accepting, bipartisan, open-minded as you praise Mitt Romney for doing what you yourself are unwilling to do. You join your fellow leftists in drooling over Romney’s meaningless departure from party-line voting, attempting to appear impartial and accepting of “the other side” (and congratulating yourself in the process) while secretly hoping no one remembers the childish, playground ridicule of eight years ago, which would force you to really cross party lines and accept that there was merit to “the other side” in a far more substantial ideological divide.
In your previous entry, you miss no opportunity to disparage the president, accusing him of “evil lies” and worse for engaging in the self congratulatory chest-beating and the sort of political spin we all know defines him, that causes all of us to roll our eyes and wish he’d just stop. You are very quick to scrutinize his claims of superlative growth in your quest for whatever discrepancy or exaggeration that may add fuel to your own hatred of the man, and provide whatever meager underpinnings you require in order to continue to present partisan, opinion-based, angry rants as being derived of something that is somehow better than that – a “Philosophical Essay” by a true critical thinker with the credentials to back it up.
Here’s what I mean:
Perhaps, as you say, the economy is not “The Best Ever”, and you can point to economists and charts that show that under Obama the economy grew by 3.6% and under Trump it was 3.4%. Armed with these facts and Internet citations, anyone can finger-point and say Trump is a liar, and wonder how anyone in their right mind can support him. Or, one might say, “Of course he is saying this in that way; that is not unexpected. But the fact is that the economy is still growing, despite completely opposite approaches by Obama and Trump. Why is this? Can we use this data to derive completely new economic theories? What factors are different between then and now? What factors are the same?
To me, these are important questions, and in an ideal world I would look to the respected thinkers and educators to have the wherewithal to rise above the hate and division and force the rest of us to address them.
But instead, well, I’ve already been there. Your essays consist of whatever supports the “evil, white-supremacist, liar-in-chief” narrative, and dismiss entirely anything that does not fall in line with that narrative. I left out, however, the indisputable facts about record low unemployment among all Americans and especially African Americans and Hispanics – and so, conveniently, did you.
Just to be clear – I am not defending Trump or siding with him or choosing one set of numbers over another – not at all. What I am saying is that no one is as evil, immoral, and consistently wrong as you, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the progressive left would like us to believe Trump to be. Common sense alone tells us this is impossible.
What I am saying is that we know that Trump likes to take credit for everything good that happens under his watch, and to deflect everything bad. I know this to be true, as I have known it to be true of every single politician who has robbed me of the time it takes to listen to him speak. Ho hum. Yes, yes – you hate him. I understand that. Yes, yes, you can attack him mercilessly for just about anything he says, and justify your hatred. Ho hum. You can attack his supporters and pretend to have genuine concern for why indeed they support him … “as a PhD and professional philosopher, the reasoning behind this eludes me”. Give it a rest.
So you disagree with his tax cuts. Perfectly reasonable. But do you engage in any kind of discussion about whether they did or did not contribute to the surge in employment, rise in corporate profit, or increased pay in mid-level workers? Are you willing to accept that tax cuts, in at least some situations, can provide a stimulus to the economy in ways that can benefit everyone, as JFK so famously said? If you are, you certainly hold that close to the chest, claiming that the tax cuts are only some kind of crony secret benefit to Trump’s rich pals and White Americans. Evil, white-supremacist liar.
And so goes the narrative. We are a divided nation, growing angrier every day. I believe it is your responsibility – yours as an educator, a doctor of letters, a professionally trained thinker and logician, to rise above this hatred and resist the temptation to engage in the name-calling and whole-cloth rush to denigration that massages that anger so deep within you.
I challenge you to compartmentalize and recognize the difference between real thought and the childish blather we have come to expect from the unwashed denizens of social media (whom we now know to be of Russian origin, backed by a strategic plan to incite and carefully cultivate the very chasm that continues to divide us every day).
I am not asking you to necessarily back Trump, to support him or to stop attacking him – I am asking you to wave good-bye to your tribe for a moment, to expose yourself to a broader base of information and analysis; to seek out and embrace the opinions of those with whom you disagree and think about all of them, and allow yourself to grow and actually become the thinker you believe yourself to be.
I’m thinking about Alan Dershowitz here, who spoke for a solid hour at the Senate impeachment hearings. And this thought will ultimately circle around to Romney, I hope.
A noted Constitutional attorney, Dershowitz is anything but partisan – he has opposed Trump’s impeachment and backs the current US policy towards Israel, yet he supported both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He has a long history of trying cases that test the Constitution and have far-reaching impact on our understanding and interpretation of the law. His legal points of view are the result of high-level critical thinking and the absence of emotional, partisan, or otherwise personal input. It is certainly possible to disagree with him, but one had better be prepared in order to do so.
Ultimately, his Constitution-based argument lay unchallenged; no Democrat was able to present their case against Trump with a Constitutional authority that came close to challenging that of Dershowitz. Sad, really, because as lawmakers it’s kinda their job to know and understand the Constitution, and to be able to argue its interpretation with a mere Harvard professor, isn’t it? In the end, many Republicans said that the Democrats made their case quite well; that they were willing to stipulate that Trump had done everything they said he did, but none of it rose to the level of an “impeachable offense”. It was up to the prosecution to challenge this interpretation of the Constitution, not to trot out a line of witnesses who re-stated what had already been accepted. And no one was able to this.
One would hope that the hour that Dershowitz spoke might have educated not only rank-and-file Americans but members of the Senate minority on the dangers of a party-line impeachment process, but with our government that may be too much to expect. And perhaps we have Romney all wrong – maybe he hated Trump like any Democrat and planned to vote for impeachment on both counts, and maybe he was the only one in the chamber who actually learned something from Dershowitz, or at least came to the realization that hatred is not a luxury afforded our lawmakers.
In the end, I think the right decision was made. Not that I am a “Trump Supporter” (although I’m sure I seem like one to some), but I think that what Hamilton wrote and Dershowitz said is extremely important.
For the record, despite the seething hatred I have for Andrew Johnson and what he did when he became president, I think that while morally right in their motives, the Radical Republicans had no Constitutional basis for impeachment. In fact, their actions in passing the Tenure of Office Act and goading Johnson to fire Edwin Stanton, (thus giving them the grounds for impeachment) were morally, ethically, and legally reprehensible. I have a similar opinion about the Clinton impeachment – although in that case there really was a crime.
But my point is this. While I would hope that members of the Senate would put the Constitution ahead of party loyalty, and while I would hope that those members of our government who blindly support or oppose Trump would learn how to put their anger and hatred aside and deal with the true laws of this country, I harbor no fantasy that this will ever happen. Party loyalty and the prospect for personal gain in the face of victory are just too tempting, and the back-door political penalties for breaking ranks too risky. Did anyone in this country actually think that the Republican-majority House would not vote to impeach? Did anyone think for a minute that he would be convicted in the Republican Senate?
And all across this country, none of us really needed to waste our time reading about this hearing, did we? We knew what Rachel Maddow was going to say, just as we knew what Glen Beck was going to say. I found nothing of interest in the op-ed section of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, on MSNBC or Fox News.
But I do hold out the fervent hope (read: “fantasy”) that there will be thinkers who can set us all straight, who can put this in context, who can give equal weight to both sides in a well-thought-out critical analysis, giving context, perspective, and understanding to the nuance of both sides. And with each passing day, the need for this kind of analysis becomes more and more critical; our partisan divide gets wider and wider, our ability to hold rational conversations with those who hold points of view that differ from hours is severely curtailed. And as the rift between us grows, as cooler heads retreat and the “call to action” of people like Maxine Waters prevails, we grow dangerously closer to a Charles Sumner/Preston Blair moment. As we allow ourselves to abandon logic and reason and wallow in our (possibly) Russogenic Facebook anger, hatred, and extreme self-righteousness, our moment of reckoning is drawing nigh. Our number-one geopolitical rival is canny, patient, and well aware of our weaknesses. He is building his own strength, establishing his own power base, and waiting like a jackal for us to provide him with opportunity.
And Mike – you are the embodiment of that weakness. My neighbor the plumber is a die-hard Trump guy, but my sister is equally ravenous on the other side. Neither has put anything close to a rational thought into their opinion, but they cling to it nonetheless. And you are not much different. But you need to be better than either of them.
I implore you to take your blinders off. Treat both sides with equal scrutiny. Instead of wondering aloud why anyone could support Trump as a mere rhetorical device, why not really ask yourself that question, and open yourself up to the answer?
I will even give you a few starting points. First of all, it is highly unlikely that anyone in this world is as entirely bad, as entirely motivated by self-interest and evil as you make Trump out to be. (Well, Joe Biden comes close, but that’s another topic). What’s the expression? “Even Hitler loved children and dogs”.
Second, the world is not divided into “Trump Supporters” and “Everyone Else”. It is possible to look at what this man does (not what he says he does, or what leftist publications say he does, but what he actually accomplishes. The re-write of NAFTA is a great example. So is what TJB posted after your “I Look Away” essay. Americans need to learn this – that they need to take the trouble to understand policy and action, to know enough about history to develop an opinion of policy and action in a historical context, to develop an understanding of differing points of view on economic theory and the place of government in our lives – and to know that it’s possible to agree with a president on some things and disagree on others, without fear of being labeled and ostracized.
And whether we like it or not, people look to you – a philosopher and educator – to lead the way, but you are not doing your job. You are leading us deeper into the hatred that will ultimately destroy us, by putting your credentials on the same pile of crap parroted by those we don’t expect to know any better.
Great post, DH! Lots of good points.
In academia, the humanities have mostly failed. Standards of scholarship have slipped. Indoctrination has replaced thinking. It is very sad.
That is a very solid critique of Mike’s whole project here.
Mike is of course entitled to his opinions, but this blog has become more one-sided and unreliable than CNN.
Does a blog-writer or opinion columnist covering a subject have a duty to write about both the good and the bad of the subject matter? I don’t think so. I don’t expect a balanced appraisal of the Democratic candidates from an organ of the Republican party.
Does a blog-writer or opinion columnist covering a subject have a duty to research the foundation for a story beyond relying on the first link they see? And provide a balanced context for the story? I do think so. When you repeat a story, you are responsible for what you pass on. I find this to be a serious weakness here.
Does a philosopher or professor have any duties that a dry-cleaner doesn’t, in respect of a blog outside his work? I don’t think so. We do, though, all have a duty when communicating to live up to the best of our potential.
Trump didn’t start the divisiveness. He didn’t create it. He’s just working in it, very effectively, like the Democrats are.
Americans would do well to ask the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Croats and the Slavs, the Irish Nationalists and Unionists, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and many others around the world and through history, just what happens when that divisiveness is amplified.
The collapse of the USA is on my list of greatest dangers of the next 50 years. You’d be surprised how fast it can happen.
First two paragraphs, agree completely. Third, agree only in so far as the author expects to be taken seriously as potentially having any influence at all even with those who mostly agree with him.
Does a philosopher or professor have any duties that a dry-cleaner doesn’t, in respect of a blog outside his work? I don’t think so. We do, though, all have a duty when communicating to live up to the best of our potential.
Disagree here. Once one leans on one’s credentials, appealing to one’s own authority as a critical thinker, one is accountable for the damage, you might say slight, done to similar members of one’s credential group. And most damning, as a professor, a huge responsibility for damage done to one’s students, the taxpayers who subsidize the university and those students, and to liberal and democratic society.
Americans would do well to ask the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Croats and the Slavs…
We learned that lesson once back in the 1860’s, yet the memory and understanding of how deeply serious that lesson is, was lost. Also that a civil war is often the nastiest kind of war. Greatest loss of life and greatest loss of property, wealth, and productivity in the nation’s history. But the left is oblivious to the consequences of the damage that they are doing to our society. As you say the collapse of the US is a danger that can get out of control very quickly. Similar to what Hemingway (or was it Twain or Fitzgerald or …?) said about financial bankruptcy. At first it happens very slowly, then all at once.
I should clarify above, while you were explicit in speaking about “a blog outside his work”, I would agree IF the kind of thinking and disagreement was such that one could reasonably expect would not bleed over into the classroom. Personally, I think you’d have to be terribly naive given the amount of TDS ( and before it BDS, and whatever in regard to any conservative ideas) that are frequently, consistently demonstrated here. In my own days as a college student, decades ago, my professors could not resist taking casual shots/digs at Reagan and, by my economics professor, at Jack Kemp. The leftist narrative bled into my non-STEM classes even then.
I agreed with Romney about Russia; after the fall of the wall, the US dropped the ball. This is not to say that we could have “saved” Russia, just that we failed to recognize the significance of what was occurring. Now Russia is moving back to the world stage and a major player in our elections.
The point is not so much that you agreed with him, but that he was summarily dismissed and publicly ridiculed for his statement and no one has ever or would ever walk that ridicule back.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama and Clinton secretly agreed with him too, but chose to put party and power over national security and truth. Nor would I be surprised if that whole narrative grew out of Clinton’s backdoor dealings with Russia, which put millions into the Clinton Foundation’s coffers.
The other point is within the context of the left fawning all over Romney for his impeachment vote. Curious to know how he would have voted if he knew it might change things. But we can all see that the newfound love for Mitt is not unconditional – I’d love to see an essay on HufPost called “Gee, Romney was right about a lot of things!” but we live in a black and white world where praising him for an inconsequential vote is about as far as that can go.
Yeah…It’s not my recollection that Mike agreed with Romney at the time. As I recall he said that China was the much bigger threat and attacked Romney for not saying this. Not that such, IIRC, was the point at the time. The issue being, again IIRC, the “1980’s want their foreign policy back”. Remember this was around the time of The Great Reset Button than HRC, working for Obama, had presented to Putin.
Democrats are still in denial about how their shabby treatment of Romney in 2012 was the main reason we got Trump in 2016.
Remember this behavior on the part of the senate majority leader? Romney just took it. Lesson learned.
Harry Reid, D-Nev. has no regrets about his 2012 claims that then presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years.
The outgoing Senate Minority Leader even bragged to CNN that the comments, which had been described as McCarthyism, helped keep Romney from winning the election.
“They can call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win did he?” Reid said during a wide-ranging interview.
So, in Reid’s world, it is perfectly acceptable to make a defamatory charge against an opponent to damage his campaign.
Reid first made the accusation against the former Massachusetts governor in a 2012 interview with the Huffington Post. At the time, Reid claimed that a Bain Capital investor told him Romney didn’t pay taxes for the previous 10 years. This, Reid claimed, was why Romney hadn’t released his tax returns.
“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years!” Reid said. “Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain, but obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?”
A few days after the HuffPo interview, Reid made the same charge on the Senate floor, this time claiming as fact that Romney paid no taxes.
“As we know, he has refused to release his tax returns. If a person coming before this body wanted to be a Cabinet officer, he couldn’t be if he had the same refusal Mitt Romney does about tax returns,” Reid said. “So the word is out that he has not paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove he has paid taxes, because he has not.”
Even though Reid made a slanderous statement that Romney had in fact paid not taxes, without mentioning anything about his Bain source or skepticism, he cannot be sued for that particular statement. Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution states that members of Congress shall “be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.” The only exceptions to this rule are for treason, felonies and “breach of the peace.”
After his floor speech, Reid made the claim again, except this time he again cited his ” extremely credible source” for the accusation.
So when Reid directly accused Romney of being a tax dodge, he did so from the safety of the Senate floor. Outside the protection of legislative immunity, Romney was only possibly a tax dodge.
Not only does Reid not think he did anything wrong, he’s actually proud that his lies might have helped cost Romney the election.
Note: The Washington Post’s fact checker gave Reid ” 4 Pinocchios” for his claims. PolitiFact gave the claim a ” pants on fire” rating.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harry-reid-is-proud-he-lied-about-mitt-romneys-taxes
I think he was actually the minority leader at that point.
Sorry guys, I’m still stuck on the psychology aspects of what we call leftism. I’m over the policy arguments, because I don’t think there’s an honest debate to be found there. The correct answer on when asked a question on many if not most policies, is “I don’t really know”. Instead, we live in the most ideological of times. The answer is always cookie-cutter, referring back to what one’s tribe says one should say, parroting memes.
I was watching a bunch of vegan compilations on YouTube last night. Thought to myself something I’ve thought many times: “All of these people vote Democrat”. The videos highlighted the extreme health problems these people were experiencing yet they persisted in their ideology. Hair loss, testosterone scores below 300, in some cases, speaking as if punch-drunk, all clear signs of severe malnutrition.
Why are non-leftists happier, according to studies? Why are they physically more attractive? Why are they almost never vegan? Why don’t they color their hair purple or blue?
I point these things out in order to emphasize that we are dealing with a deep epistemological malfunction in the case of leftism. This, in my opinion is a form or ultra-neuroticism, in which the infected person must have a “just so” world, and if the world does not cooperate, they lash out by emphasizing ugliness, by demanding the ugliness be called beauty, that strength be called weakness. They create ideas that are the opposite of classical thinking, in order to jab their “oppressors” in the ribs and laugh. They do it despite themselves, like punching themselves in the face or going on a metaphorical hunger strike. Leftists use “therapy” more often, and drugs like Paxil and Zoloft. The evidence and experience shows they are more prone to diagnosable mental illness. They are also prone to illnesses that society now calls a virtue, but that historically almost all societies disavowed.
The honest argument will not be found. In almost every case, the Left demonized to he point of absurdity Republican candidates, only to call them friends when they had no power. Remember, Reagan was a fascist when he was president. So was Bush. When and if Mike Pence is president, we will become a theocratic dictatorship. Just look at the memes. This is a psychological issue and we can clearly see that by how those on the left dress, speak, eat, and even move, all according to the dictates of the same psychological drivers. They are very much the same.
All of this is exactly how a society spirals into revolutionary madness. One would hope that those hold the reigns of teaching and media would calm down the rhetoric. Instead, they double-down and become the root of the problem.
’m still stuck on the psychology aspects of what we call leftism…The correct answer on when asked a question on many if not most policies, is “I don’t really know”
Well, it’s worse than that. The same problem exists on the right, just that in the current environment, it’s not as toxic. Almost, though. Fewer and fewer of the elitists on either side have much real world understanding. It’s very much ideological and “Muh principles” and an automatic dismissal of thoughts and ideas from the kinds of people who get their hands dirty (either literally or figuratively). Hence GOP “strategist” Rick Wilson yukking it up with CNN’s leftist Don Lemon regarding the rubes who drive pickup trucks and vote for Trump. The NeverTrumpers on the right have zero understanding that there are so many people out there who are substantial business men and such who are sick of being regulated to death over petty BS, of being forced to either hire illegal workers or lose business to those who do, the PC culture in general, etc. These people don’t exist nor matter in the GOP NeverTrumper universe. They’re mostly lawyers and other bureaucrats, many working in the defense industry.
Long before anyone was taking Trump seriously there was a poll or something where a discussion was going on as to whether many in the GOP establishment had anyone in their social circles who drove a pickup truck. I was quite stunned when this was discussed on certain right-leaning, “solid conservative” forums that so many of such people seemed dumbfounded that such a thing mattered, yet at the same time as discussions went on it became apparent that those same people were very disconnected with many real-world issues.
That said, I’m not 100% all-in with the hands-dirty people. There are definite blinders on in that world as well. But all of it, elitist, blue collar, enlisted man, NCO’s, officers, whatever stems from an inability to acknowledge that, as you say, The correct answer on when asked a question on many if not most policies, is “I don’t really know”.
I present to you, peak Leftist psychology. When a species meets its end. Can it be a coincidence that Cain offered vegetables, and Abel offered meat to God? Perhaps an inside joke in the Old Restamnt:
https://youtu.be/jAbLReU_QeI
As soon as a dirt-poor society begins to get a little richer, the first thing they do is to eat more meat. Happens every time.