Brazil and the Coronavirus

I have been wondering if the actions the United States and other countries have been taking to stop the spread of the Chinese Virus don’t represent a massive overreaction against a threat that is not all that serious. COVID-19 is not, after all, the Black Death, and even the most hysterical predictions have the number of deaths in the thousands, rather than the millions. Is that really worth shutting down whole sectors of our economy and bringing on a bad recession? It may seem callous to even ask the question. Isn’t it all worth it just to save a few, or even one life? Actually, no it is not. We do have to make some balance between saving lives and risking long-term damage to the economy. After all, people die in economic downturns too. Often we do not make choices between obvious good and bad outcomes but must select the least bad alternative. ‘

Despite my doubts, though, I think that we are striking a good balance between saving lives and protecting the economy. Better safe than sorry is my opinion. I’d rather have people asking whether all this sheltering in place was really necessary than wishing we could have done something more. If we have occasionally overreacted to the coronavirus threat, Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil has taken the opposite extreme. His policy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in his country is to do nothing and rely on the Brazilians’ natural immunity to protect them from the pandemic. No this is not a joke. I wish it were.

Here is the account from the AP.

Even as coronavirus cases mount in Latin America’s largest nation, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has staked out the most deliberately dismissive position of any major world leader, calling the pandemic a momentary, minor problem and saying strong measures to contain it are unnecessary.

Bolsonaro says his response to the disease matches that of President Donald Trump in the U.S., but the Brazilian leader has gone further, labeling the virus as “a little flu” and saying state governors’ aggressive measures to halt the disease were crimes.

On Thursday, Bolsonaro told reporters in the capital, Brasilia, that he feels Brazilians’ natural immunity will protect the nation.

“The Brazilian needs to be studied. He doesn’t catch anything. You see a guy jumping into sewage, diving in, right? Nothing happens to him. I think a lot of people were already infected in Brazil, weeks or months ago, and they already have the antibodies that help it not proliferate,” Bolsonaro said. “I’m hopeful that’s really a reality.”

President Jair Bolsonaro

If I were the president of a country, I am not sure that I would brag about my countrymen jumping into sewage and I doubt that exposure to sewage really strengthens one’s immune system. It seems to me that long term exposure to pools of sewage would have a deleterious effect on the immune system, but what do I know? Maybe I should have been diving into sewage all this time. And maybe President Bolsonario isn’t as crazy as he sounds. Brazil’s warm, tropical climate could inhibit the spread of COVID-19. It still seems reckless though, and it seems that a majority of his fellow Brazilians are not too happy with President Bolsonaro’s laissez-faire attitude.

Bolsonaro, 65, shows no sign of wavering even as the nation’s tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases approach 4,000, deaths top 100 and Brazilians overwhelmingly demand tough anti-virus measures. Pollster Datafolha this month found 73% of people supported total isolation, and 54% approved of governors’ management of the crisis. Bolsonaro’s backing was just 33%.

It may be that President Bolsonaro is taking a long term look at the pandemic and its aftermath and concluding that it is important to keep Brazil’s economy afloat.

Does Bolsonaro actually believe, as he says, that the virus will be vanquished by a cocktail of drugs and Brazil’s tropical climate? It’s possible, but analysts say a more calculated political gamble may underlie his increasingly defiant position.

Bolsonaro may have concluded that when he faces reelection in two and a half years, the economy will matter more to most Brazilians than the death toll from coronavirus. By labeling the virus threat as overblown and decrying state governors’ quarantines and shutdowns as unnecessary, he could be preparing to blame others for any recession that might happen.

“If things go really poorly from an economic point of view, he can point his finger at the governors,” Christopher Garman, managing director for the Americas at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said by phone. “What he isn’t calculating is the public opinion hit that he can take for being seen to have not handled well the public health crisis.”

So, is the president of Brazil an idiot or a visionary? I guess we’ll find out.

 

 

 

The Election of 1888

The election of 1888 was all about tariffs. There were other issues, to be sure, and the usual amount of mudslinging, but it was mostly about tariffs. Tariffs may not seem to be an issue to get especially excited about, but in those days before the income tax, tariffs were the major source of revenue for the federal government. Moreover, many people believe that high tariffs were essential to protect American industry for foreign, particularly British, competition. President Grover Cleveland had come out in favor of lower tariffs in his message to Congress in December 1887, arguing that the high tariff was an excessive and unjust level of taxation that hurt consumers. Some of the president’s advisors had fretted that his stand on lowering the tariff would hurt his chance of reelection, But Cleveland simply replied, “What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?”

The Democrats held their national convention in St. Louis, Missouri from June 5-7. Grover Cleveland was nominated for a second term by acclamation, the first Democratic president nominated to run for a second term since Martin Van Buren back in 1840. Since President Cleveland’s Vice-President, Thomas A. Hendricks had died on November 25, 1885, the Democrats needed to select a new Vice-Presidential nominee. They picked Allen G. Thurman from Ohio after only one ballot. Allen G Thurman had had a long and distinguished career in politics, serving in the House of Representatives from 1845 to 1847 and was the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court from 1854 to 1856. Thurman was a Senator from Ohio from 1869 to 1881 and was on the commission to resolve the contentious election of 1876. Thurman was also known for opposing land grants to railroad companies and was said to have left the Senate as poor as when he had entered it.

Grover Cleveland

Allen G, Thurman

The Republicans met in Chicago from June 19-25. James G Blaine was the front runner, but he withdrew, deciding that he was too controversial to defeat Grover Cleveland. Instead, the Republicans nominate Benjamin Harrison from Indiana on the seventh ballot. Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. He had fought in the Civil War helping to raise a regiment and rising to the rank of brevet brigadier general. After the war Harrison worked as a lawyer and became involved in Indiana politics, serving as a senator from 1881 to 1887. The Republicans went on to nominate Levi P. Morton from New York for the Vice-Presidency. Levi P. Morton had served in the House of Representatives from1879 to 1881, as Minister to France from 1881 to 1885 and the Governor of New York from 1895 to 1896. As the American Minister to France, Levi Morton had officially accepted the gift of the Statue of Liberty and had placed the first rivet in the statue.

Benjamin Harrison

Levi P. Morton

 

The Greenback Party had faded away, but there were some minor party candidates. There was the Prohibition Party nominated Brigadier General Clinton B. Fisk for president and John A. Brooks for Vice-President and ended up getting 249,819 (2.2%) votes.

Gen. Clinton Fisk

John A, Brooks

 

The Union Labor Party nominated Alson Streeter and Charles E. Cunningham and got just 146,602 (1.31%) votes.

Alson Streeter

Charles E Cunningham

 

The campaign was mostly about the tariff question with Cleveland and the Democrats supporting lower tariffs and Harrison and the Republicans in favor of higher protective tariffs. It wouldn’t have been an American election, however, if there weren’t at least some personal attacks. The Republicans accused Cleveland of abusing his young wife, Frances Folsom who he had married in the White House in 1886. She denied the story, assuring everyone that Grover was a kind and considerate husband. The Democrats retaliated by accusing Benjamin Harrison of being anti-Catholic, anti-labor, and wanting increased immigration from China to force wages down. The Republicans accused Cleveland of being pro-British and wanting to adopt the British system of free trade to assist British manufacturers at the expense of American industry.

The Murchison Letter was an election dirty trick worth mentioning. “Murchison” was a California Republican named Charles Osgoodby who wrote a letter to the British Minister to the United States, Sir Lionel Sackville-West. In this letter, he pretended to be a former British citizen named Charles F. Murchison, who wanted to know which candidate would be better for his old homeland. Sackville-West was imprudent enough to reply that, in his opinion, Cleveland would be the better candidate for British interests. The Republicans gleefully published “Murchison’s” correspondence with Sir Sackville-West, probably costing Cleveland the Irish vote and the state of New York. Sir Sackville-West ended up getting fired for his interference in American politics.

The Murchison Letter

It was a close election, but in the end, the Republicans turned out to be better organized and better funded than the Democrats. Cleveland won the popular vote with 5,534,488 votes (48.6%) to Harrison’s 5,443,892 votes (47.8%), but Harrison won in the electoral college with 233 votes to Cleveland’s 186. As the election of 1884, the results were regional with the Republicans sweeping the North and the Democrat winning the South, along with Massachusetts. Only two states switched sides from 1884, New York and Indiana. If Cleveland had won those two states he would have been reelected.

The Election of 1888

So, Grover Cleveland left the White House in March 1889, but he would be back.

Bernie Could Win

It may be too early to make predictions, but it looks like Bernie Sanders will end up being the Democratic nominee for president in the upcoming election in November. This prospect has Republicans giddy with glee and establishment Democrats dismayed, as they foresee a result similar to the election of 1972. In that election, the Democrats nominated the very left-wing George McGovern who then went on to lose to Nixon in one of the most lopsided defeats (520-17 electoral votes) in the history of American presidential elections. It is easy to imagine that the openly “democratic socialist” aka Communist, Sanders will suffer a similar humiliation.

I am not so sure. This is not the same country as it was in 1972 or 1984 when Reagan won by an even more lopsided 525-13 electoral votes. We are more evenly polarized these days and people seem to be more loyal to their political tribes and less willing to vote for the other side’s candidate. Elections seem to be won more at the margins and there is less likelihood of the kind of massive landslide that occurred in those two elections. I cannot imagine California going red and voting for Trump, no matter how insane the Democratic candidate might be. I doubt if Sanders will make much headway in the deep red south. I do not think Trump is going to carry forty-nine states no matter what happens in the campaign. I am also not so sure that Sanders is doomed to be defeated. I do believe that Trump is likely to be reelected. He has the advantages of the incumbent and the economy is doing well, but nothing is absolutely certain. Bernie Sanders could win. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Bernie Sanders is actually the Democratic candidate most likely to defeat Trump.

The next President?

Donald Trump’s main advantage has been the enthusiasm of his supporters, and detractors. No one seems to be neutral or apathetic in their opinion about Trump. The people who do like like Trump, really hate him, and the people who support Trump really, really love him. It is this enthusiasm that won him the presidency in the previous election. Hilary Clinton had many advantages and ought to have won the election, but no one really liked her all that much. Her support among Democrats was lukewarm. She was too much a part of an increasingly unpopular establishment. People voted for her as the least bad option, not because they were excited about another Clinton presidency. In contrast, the people who voted for Trump were excited about his promise to Make America Great Again. They voted for him because they wanted him to be president.

Of all the Democratic candidates this year, only Bernie Sanders really generates the same kind of excitement that Donald Trump does. No one really likes Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, or Pete Buttigieg. Their supporters are not excited in the same way that Bernie’s are. If any of the other candidates become the nominee, Democratic voters will be voting against Trump. If Bernie Sanders is the nominee, they will be voting for Sanders. Voting for a candidate generates more excitement than voting against a candidate. Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who generates the kind of enthusiasm that Trump gets from his supporters. I think that Sanders is the only candidate who might be a  threat to Trump.

It is disturbing that Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner and has at least some chance of being the next president. Judging by his campaign promises, a Sanders presidency would have the most extremist left-wing agenda in the history of the United States. He will ban fracking and the export of American oil, remove any limits on accepting refugees and leave the borders wide open. He wants Medicare for all to be paid for with massive tax increases on the wealthy and deep cuts to military spending. Because of the urgent climate emergency (and the fact that even a Democratic Congressional majority might balk at some of his more extreme plans), Bernie won’t have time to enact his proposals by legislation or permit the usual democratic give and take. He plans to act by executive orders, bypassing Congress and the constitution. In effect, Bernie Sanders plans to govern as an autocrat, ruling by decree. Bernie Sanders has never met an enemy of the United States he didn’t like and has expressed his admiration for some of the worst tyrants in the world. A Sanders presidency would be a gift to our enemies, especially Putin who would benefit greatly from the increase in the price of oil from an American ban on fracking.

It is even more disturbing that almost the entire field of Democratic candidates are competing to see who can out-Bernie Bernie and move furthest to the left. There don’t seem to be any moderates in the race, except for Michael Bloomberg, who has authoritarian issues of his own. Maybe some of them, perhaps Joe Biden for one, are not being entirely sincere and plan to pivot to the center, but the fact that they feel the need to even pretend to be so extreme is worrisome. As it is, the only difference between Bernie Sanders and the rest is that he is honest enough to openly run as a socialist.

The election of any of the current field of Democrats would be a disaster for our country and the cause of freedom. The danger is not just that we would have a socialist president, but that the Democrats will continue their movement to the extreme left. Trump and the Republicans in down-ticket races need to win by a large enough margin to thrash the Democrats and move them back towards the center.

To make that happen, the Republicans cannot be overconfident or think that running against Bernie Sanders will be an easy victory. The adage, “Be careful what you wish for” applies here. Bernie Sanders probably has as good as, if not better chance of winning as any other Democratic candidate. Don’t get cocky.

Impeachment

Now that the Donald Trump impeachment saga has come to an ignominious end, I thought it might be interesting and informative to take a look at the previous presidential impeachments and compare them to the present effort. So far, there have been three presidents impeached by the House of Representatives, Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2020. While the precise circumstances of each case have been dissimilar, with various specific accusations being made against each president in diverse historical and political contexts, there have been similarities in the three presidential impeachments, as we shall see. In no case, so far, has the president actually been convicted and removed from office. In each case, the charges made against the president, the conduct of the trial in the Senate and the ultimate outcome has been a matter of politics rather than the law. Impeachment, then, is more of a political matter than a strictly legal one.

The constitution mentions impeachment in several clauses. Article I Section 2 Clause 5 states:

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

The House of Representatives impeaches a government official, including the president. Impeachment is simply bringing charges of misconduct against the officeholder, rather like a prosecutor bringing charges against a person accused of committing a crime. Contrary to what many of Donald Trump’s critics seem to believe, impeaching an official does not mean that that official is actually guilty of any crime, nor is he automatically removed from office. The Senate tries impeachments, acting as a sort of jury, as stated in Article I Section 3 Clauses 6 and 7 of the constitution.

6: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

7: Judgment in Cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

According to Article II Section 4 of the constitution:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, as a result of the conflict between Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction. It is not necessary to get into the details of that conflict here.

Andrew Johnson

Simply put, President Johnson favored a more lenient treatment of the defeated south than the Republicans who controlled Congress. Johnson was a Southern Democrat who had been added to Lincoln’s ticket in the election of 1864 as a gesture of national unity. After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson found himself opposed by both Congress and his own Cabinet, particularly his Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. To prevent Johnson from replacing Lincoln’s cabinet with his own men, Congress enacted the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 which prevented the president from dismissing cabinet officials without the consent of the Senate. Johnson demanded Stanton’s resignation anyway, Stanton barricaded himself in his office, and Congress proceeded to impeach President Johnson.

Edwin Stanton in his office.

On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach the president. The following week, the House presented eleven articles of impeachment, accusing President Johnson of violating the Tenure of Office Act by firing Edwin Stanton and appointing a new Secretary of War without the consent of the Senate, challenging the authority of Congress to legislate reconstruction, and using  “with a loud voice, certain intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues, and did therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces … against Congress [and] the laws of the United States duly enacted thereby, amid the cries, jeers, and laughter of the multitudes then assembled and within bearing”.

The case then went to the Senate on March 4. The trial began on March 23 and the voting took place on May 16 and 26. This was not really the case of a somber Senate carefully considering each article. There were reports of political pressure and even outright bribery to persuade the Senators to vote to acquit or convict. In each case, the Senate voted 35 to 19 for conviction, just one vote short of the two-thirds necessary to convict.

President Johnson remained in office but was a lame duck for the rest of his term and did not run for reelection. He was, however, vindicated in the end. The Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887 and the Supreme Court declared a similar act unconstitutional in 1920, noting that the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 was also likely to be unconstitutional. Andrew Johnson was not a very good president, but he should not have been impeached. His impeachment was little more than a partisan attempt to remove a president that the Republicans saw as standing in the way of Reconstruction and divided a country that needed to be united in the wake of the most destructive war in its history.

I think that it is fair to say that the Republicans hated President Bill Clinton more than they had any previous Democratic president. Part of this hatred was personal, a sort of moral outrage against a president seen to be immoral. As his nickname, Slick Willie might suggest, Bill Clinton had a reputation for sleaze and corruption, and for escaping the consequences for his actions. Part of the dislike stemmed from thwarted political hopes. When the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in forty years, after the 1994 midterms, the Republican congressional leaders, particularly Newt Gingrich, believed that they would be setting the national agenda, with President Clinton reduced to irrelevance. Clinton was more politically adroit than the Republicans expected, however, and was able to portray the Republicans as obstructionist extremists, by triangulating to the center, infuriating the Republicans, and easily winning reelection against the uninspiring Bob Dole.

Slick Willie

The Republicans spent most of Clinton’s term investigating Clinton’s various scandals, without making much headway with the public. The country was prosperous and at peace and Clinton was slick, so the people did not much care about his misdeeds. By 1998, however, the Republicans believed they had their chance with Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. I would rather not get into the sordid details about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky as well as the exhaustive report by Ken Starr on Clinton’s numerous transgressions. It is sufficient to point out that Clinton made false statements to a grand jury and in a deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit.

He did not have sex with that woman.

On December 19.1998, the House of Representatives voted, largely along party lines to send two articles of impeachment, perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice, to the Senate. The Senate trial lasted from January 7. 1999 to February 9. The Senate then considered the charges in a closed session until February 12 when they emerged ready to vote on the verdict. On the first charge, perjury, the Senate voted not guilty 45 to 55 and on the second charge, obstruction of justice, they voted not guilty 50 to 50, well short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict. In each case, the 45 Democratic Senators voted not guilty with five Republicans defecting on the second charge.

Should the Republicans have impeached Bill Clinton? From a legal viewpoint, yes. Clinton was unquestionably guilty of the charges made against him, and more. He was a sleazy, corrupt man who was guilty of serial sexual assault. From a political viewpoint, no. Impeaching the president was a foolish act, considering that the Republicans did not have the sixty-seven votes needed to convict and there was no chance of convincing ten Democratic Senators to break ranks with their party. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was not popular with the American people. Neither were the investigations leading up to Clinton’s impeachment. This public dislike of Ken Starr’s investigations was certainly a factor in the Republican loss of five Congressional seats in the election of 1998 when the opposition party usually gains seats in midterm elections. Clinton’s impeachment may well have a cause for the closeness of the 2000 presidential election. Normally, it is not easy for one party to hold onto the White House and Al Gore wasn’t a particularly appealing candidate. If the Republicans had not impeached Clinton, George W. Bush might have won the election by a decent margin. A great deal of subsequent partisan acrimony would likely have been avoided.

Karl Marx once wrote, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” I do not know how that statement might apply generally, but it certainly applies to the history of impeachment in the United States. The impeachment of Andrew Johnson was a high tragedy, based on fundamental constitutional questions on the relationship between the executive and legislative branches. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was tragi-comic, based as it was in the titillating details of Clinton’s sexual exploits and deceptions. The impeachment of Donald Trump has been simply a farce.

The Democrats have hated Donald Trump, probably even more than the Republicans hated Bill Clinton. Part of this is undoubtedly Trump’s brash and uncouth personality. Part of this might be due to dashed hopes. Most observers, including myself, expected Hilary Clinton to win the 2016 election, and the Democrats were looking forward to sweeping Congress and forming a permanent Democratic majority. Donald Trump’s unexpected victory enraged the Democrats.

Donald Trump

Whatever the reason, the Democrats began seeking causes for impeaching Trump even before he took office, but it was only after they gained control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections that they had any chance of impeaching him. A July 2019 telephone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky gave the democrats their pretext. In this conversation, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate corruption charges against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, allegedly threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine if Zelensky did not comply. The Democrats seized on this story to begin an impeachment inquiry in October.

Donald Trump talking to Zelensky?

On December 17. 2019 the House of Representatives voted, along partisan lines, to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate, Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. Speaker Nancy Pelosi delayed actually presenting the articles of impeachment until January 15, 2020, and the Senate trial began on January 22 and on February 5, the Senate voted to acquit Trump 48 to 52 on the first charge and 47 to 53 on the second charge, along partisan lines with Senator Mitt Romney the only Republican voting guilty on the first charge.

The impeachment of Donald Trump was a supreme act of folly by the Democrats. Not only did the Democrats not have the sixty-seven votes needed to convict President Trump, but they also did not even have a majority in the Senate, so they had no control over how the Senate trial was to be arranged. Under the circumstances, Trump’s acquittal was a foregone conclusion, and the whole impeachment was a waste of time and money. The Democrats in the House of Representatives were so eager to appease their base by impeaching Trump that they didn’t bother to make much of a case against him. The impeachment investigation was hasty and partisan, without much of an attempt to include Republicans in the process. The Senate trial was a joke since the Republicans didn’t take the charges seriously. The whole affair was a trivialization of the impeachment process. I expect that the Republicans will take revenge by impeaching the next Democratic president over similarly trivial charges until impeachment becomes a regular part of politics and presidents are being impeached for jaywalking or tearing the tags off mattresses.

Pocahontas Fight Heap Big Lies

Elizabeth Warren, aka Pocahontas, the Pale-Faced Indian, has a plan to combat the rampant disinformation on social media and the Internet. This is a growing problem since the lies that are spread unchallenged over the web keep people from making the right decisions like voting for Democrats.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a plan to fight disinformation and to hold tech companies accountable for their actions in light of the 2016 election.

“Disinformation and online foreign interference erode our democracy, and Donald Trump has invited both,” Warren said in a Tweet Wednesday. “Anyone who seeks to challenge and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election must be fully prepared to take this on – and I’ve got a plan to do it.”

Warren proposed to combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google responsible for spreading misinformation designed to suppress voters from turning out.

“I will push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote,” Warren said in a release.

According to Warren, we need to control the information that voters have access to protect their right to vote. That seems to be rather an Orwellian statement. Warren goes on.

“The stakes of this election are too high — we need to fight the spread of false information that disempowers voters and undermines democracy,” Warren said. “I’ll do my part — and I’m calling on my fellow candidates and big tech companies to do their part too.”

Great Chief Pocahontas protect braves and squaws from heap big lies

I am sure that I am not the only one who suspects that politicians and government agencies might not be entirely evenhanded and unbiased when it comes to determining what is fake news and disinformation. Authoritarian governments have typically punished the bearers of news that might make them look bad in much the same way as Warren proposed, even if, or especially if the information is entirely accurate. The old Soviet Union did not permit any news, such as airplane crashes, nuclear power plant failures, or the level of crime, that might lead anyone to suspect that the Soviet system wasn’t as perfect as the government claimed. I am sure that the government of China has not bothered to tell its people the full extent of the dangers of the coronavirus.

But aside from such concerns, and the equally obvious question of whether Senator Warren’s proposal is compatible with the First Amendment, there is a more fundamental issue here, who is responsible for deciding what is disinformation? Are we, the American people, responsible adults who are capable of deciding for themselves what sources to trust, or are we ignorant children who need someone like Senator Warren to sort it out for us? The essential premise behind censorship or government control over information is that it is for the protection of the people, who are unable to decide for themselves what might be false or harmful information. For this reason, the Roman Catholic Church used to promulgate an Index of Forbidden Books, a list of books deemed dangerous for laypeople to read lest they come to question the faith. For the same reason, the church discouraged the private reading of the Bible. People needed guidance from the clergy since they were obviously too ignorant to decide matters of faith for themselves. The kings and emperors of old all routinely employed censorship to protect their subjects from dangerous ideas, like maybe kings and emperors were not really needed all that much. The Nazis burned and banned un-German books, to keep the master race from being defiled, and the Communists kept the workers from reading anything which might give them the false impression that they were not living in the Workers’ paradise.

This reasoning is justified in an authoritarian polity, in which the government takes a paternal interest in the physical and spiritual welfare of its subjects. It is antithetical in a democratic polity in which the people’s representatives make up the government. It is not up to Senator Elizabeth Warren, or anyone else in the government to tell us what is disinformation. It is up to us, the people to educate ourselves to learn how to tell the difference between trustworthy and untrustworthy information, and if we are not willing to do this, if we would rather the likes of Senator Warren do our thinking for us, rather than thinking for ourselves, then we do not deserve to be free.

This, then, is part of the larger question of what sort of country we want to live in. Do we wish to be free citizens in a free republic in which we get to decide who to trust and how to live or do we want to be serfs in a country in which our alleged betters decide such things for us? Elizabeth Warren, and really the whole pack of Democratic candidates, seem to be in favor of the latter course. I prefer to be free.

Hitler and Bernie

I may be breaking my own rule about comparing American politicians by posting this meme.

Separated at birth?

In my defense, I am not posting this because I believe that Bernie Sanders is anything at all like Adolf Hitler. I simply wish to point out that if you wish to call yourself a socialist, like Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, and so many other Democrats are doing these days, you are putting yourself in really bad company.

Of course, the standard line taken by the left is that Hitler was not a socialist at all. Certain, Hitler’s party was called the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, but that was only disinformation, a lie designed to beguile the masses into supporting Hitler instead of real socialists. Very well, then, but what about Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, and others. All these men called themselves socialists, and all of them were mass-murdering dictators, like Hitler. Either all of these tyrants were lying, or there really is some link between socialism and mass murder.

I am sure that Bernie Sanders and the other Democratic Socialists do not intend to become mass murderers. The essential basis of every form of socialism, whether democratic or otherwise, is that a small group of elite planners based in Washington or Moscow can organize an economy, or an entire society more efficiently and justly than the decisions made by millions of free people acting in their own interests. In other words, these planners know how to run your life better than you do yourself. The problem is that any plan, no matter how enlightened, is not going to command universal support. There are always going to be people who want to do their own thing and not what the planners want them to do, so some level of coercion is always needed. If a square peg won’t fit into a round hole, it must be pounded in. If the peg’s edges are ground away, or a few million people need to be killed, it’s all for the best of causes.

One might object that unlike all of the true socialists, Hitler preached hate against people of other races, especially Jews. True socialists, like Lenin and Mao, may have used excessive force, but surely their intentions were good. They only wanted to create truly just societies. The means may have been bad, but the ends were good, while the ends of Hitler and the Nazis, the deliberate extermination of entire populations were wholly evil. Maybe, but Hitler did support policies that many people, especially progressives, even Bernie Sanders might view as good. Take a look at the National Socialist party platform.

9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.

10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:

11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.

12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

18. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.

These seem to be policies that any good progressive could stand behind. I suspect that many Germans eventually supported Hitler because he seemed to be providing hope in desperate economic times, rather than his anti-semitism, although we must not discount the level of German resentment against the Jews, made worse, perhaps, by the depression.

Still, people regarded as truly socialist also preached hatred against groups of people, not race-based hatred, to be sure, but class-based hatred. Historically, socialists have excoriated class enemies as bourgeois capitalist exploiters, grasping landlords, kulaks, or billionaires not paying their fair share, as fervently as Hitler ever attacked the Jews and other inferior races. The socialists have seldom attacked individuals for their misdeeds, which might be somewhat justifiable, but people who belong to the wrong class. In Lenin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China, being the grandson of a factory owner or a landlord was to be guilty of enjoying class privilege even if that particular person had never exploited anyone at all. There is more than an echo of such thinking in the contemporary leftist or socialist obsession with White, male privilege. I do not see that there is very much difference between persecuting someone because of their race and persecuting someone because of the misdeeds of their relatives. Either way, it is making use of a perceived enemy to mobilize people.

To be clear, none of what I have written is meant to imply that Bernie Sanders or any other self-proclaimed Democratic socialist is anything at all like Adolf Hitler, nor would electing Sanders result in any like the Nazi state. What I am saying is that Bernie Sanders has a lot of the same furniture in his mental attic as some of the worst people in history and that socialism, no matter how benevolent the intentions of its proponents might be, sooner or later always ends in tyranny.

Then again, considering that some of Bernie Sanders’s supporters don’t have a problem with Stalin’s gulags and are promising violence if Bernie isn’t elected, there may be a closer parallel between Sanders and the likes of Hitler or Stalin than I would like to believe.

Over the Edge

While I was writing on how close we, as a country are, to stepping off the edge of a cliff into the abyss of political confusion, the Democrats in the House of Representatives took us a step closer by voting to impeach Donald Trump. This attempt at removing the president from office is foolish because there is no conceivable way that the Democrats will get the sixty-seven votes needed to convict the president and remove him from office. Given that at present there are fifty-three Republican Senators, it is unlikely that even a majority of the Senate will vote to convict. The most likely outcome of this farce is that the Senate will vote to acquit Trump with at least one or two Democratic Senators defecting. Trump and his supporters will announce that he has been vindicated of any wrongdoing, and Trump will campaign on the basis that the impeachment was nothing less than a coup by the swamp he had been trying to drain. Trump will make the 2020 election between himself as the tribune of the people fighting against the deep state elite which tried to unseat a duly elected president on specious charges and he will win, if not by a landslide, then by a comfortable margin. Already, the Republicans are setting records in fundraising.

If the only outcome of the Democrats’ attempt to impeach the president was to reelect the president they are trying so desperately to get rid of, it would not be a serious matter, more amusing than anything else. This impeachment is a serious matter, however, because of the dangerous precedent, the Democrats are setting. This attempt at impeaching the president is not motivated by any particular wrongdoing discovered. The Democrats have been stating their intention to impeach Trump even before his inauguration. The telephone call between President Trump and President Zelensky is only a pretext. This impeachment, unlike previous presidential impeachments, was done solely for political purposes, to undo the results of the 2016 election. Politics did play a role in the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, to be sure, but these two men actually did commit violations of the law. Donald Trump is a victim of a witch hunt, an unceasing pursuit to impeach him for anything. The impeachment of Donald Trump could best be described as an attempted coup.

Since this impeachment is being done simply to remove a president the Democrats do not like, what is there to stop the Republicans from retaliating by impeaching the next Democratic president? Some Republicans are already threatening to do so. Why shouldn’t they, since those are the new rules? And, what is to stop the Democrats from replying in kind against the next Republican president? Do we really want to have a situation in which every president from here on out is impeached the instant the opposition party takes control of Congress? What happens if a president really does commit a serious crime or abuse of power? Would anyone take an attempt to impeach him seriously? Why should they, if the last five times the president was impeached were simply politics? What happens if a president impeached on specious grounds in convicted, and simply refuses to leave the White House? Half the country might back him in the ensuing constitutional crisis.

There is a way to remove a president you don’t like. It is called an election. The Democrats would have done better to have prepared to make their case to the voters that Trump should be removed from office next November. Instead, they chose to take that decision away from us and to take the country a few steps closer to the edge. We really don’t want to go over that cliff.

 

On the Edge

I was a little confused when I saw this meme.

 

I was not aware that the National Socialist Party was fielding candidates in next year’s election. In fact, I was not aware that there were enough Nazis in the United States to run for any elections. But then, I saw the #bluewave at the bottom and it became clear to me. By Nazi, they are referring to the Republicans.

This meme is as pernicious as it is false. It is false because neither of the major American political parties is anything at all like the Nazis. Here is the official 1920 platform for the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP or Nazi). There may be superficial similarities with one or both of the American parties in some of the planks, but I doubt very much if either party would endorse a platform anything like the Nazi platform. It seems particularly odd to compare the party whose president has a Jewish son-in-law, is probably the most pro-Israel president in the history of US-Israeli relations, and who has just signed an executive order against college anti-semitism with the Nazis, given that the one thing the Nazis were most infamous for was their hatred of the Jews. I wonder if the creator of this meme actually knows anything at all about the Nazis, or about history in general. Probably not.

This meme is pernicious because the attitude it displays tends to undermine the norms that the members of any polity, especially a democratic republic such as ours must adhere to survive. The loser of an election must concede gracefully to the winner. The winner must not attempt to change the rules or rig the system to maintain power. Elections and policy debates must follow rules everyone agrees to and ought not to be changed because one side dislikes the results. Factions that oppose the ruling faction’s policies must be viewed as members of the loyal opposition and not as traitors. The ruling faction’s policies may be opposed but not the system itself. There must be respect for opposing viewpoints. Above all else, political violence must be accepted under any circumstance. By following these rules, our republic has had peaceful transfers of power between leaders and political parties for over two hundred years. Ceasing to follow these rules will mean an end to that long, proud record.

The problem is that if you see people, not as fellow citizens you happen to have different ideas but as members of one of the vilest groups in the history of politics, you will probably not feel much desire to compromise or deal with them. After all, if they are Nazis, you have to stop them, by any means available. You need not concede elections when your opponents are Nazis. You do not need to respect their opinions. You can engage in blatant electoral fraud, deplatform and shout down their supporters, ostracise them, conduct impeachment on bogus grounds and even sanction violence against them. If the leader of the opposing party is literally Hitler, then why not attempt to assassinate him? If his supporters are Nazis why not assault them? They are the ones promoting violence and genocide in the first place.

We are standing on the edge of an abyss here in America. We are just a few steps away from stepping off the edge, into shattering the political norms that have allowed for the peaceful transfer of power in this country for more than two centuries. No matter where you stand politically, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, no matter how you feel about President Trump, you do not want want to live in a country in which those norms have broken down. You do not want to live in the kind of country in which political violence has been normalized. There have been people on the Left who imagine themselves as part of #theresistance and people on the right who fantasize about second amendment solutions to encroaching socialism. These people have no idea what they would be getting into. If their fantasies come true, they will find themselves in a situation uglier than they can imagine.

History is full of countries in which the political norms have broken down; the last century of the Roman Republic, the Spanish Civil War, Weimar Germany, and many, many others, Once broken down, the norms are almost impossible to reestablish. The results of that breakdown are seldom greater liberty, but tyranny. It is very difficult to climb back out of the abyss.

There is still time. We can still step back from the edge. It may be difficult, but the alternative is so much worse. We can begin by not sharing memes like the one above. The people of the opposing party are not Nazis or Communists. They are our fellow citizens, whose differing opinions we ought to respect. There is no one in American politics who is even slightly like Hitler, or Stalin, or any other dictator. If you do not like the president or any other politician, say so. Vote against him or her in the next election. But please, don’t seek to break the system just because someone you don’t like is in office. They won’t be in office forever. The damage to our institutions might be forever. Let’s all walk away from the cliff while there is still time.

The Best President You’ve Never Heard Of

I doubt if many Americans could name even one American president from the nineteenth century, except for Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the nineteenth century, but he is better known for being the writer of the Declaration of Independence and in these days of educational malpractice for owning slaves. Andrew Jackson might also be remembered, if only because he appears on the twenty-dollar bill. Grover Cleveland still has his moment of fame for being the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. I doubt many Americans would even recognize names like John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison.

This historical ignorance may be forgivable when you consider that the presidency did not play so prominent a role in the nation’s affairs as it has in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These were the days in which the president was simply the chief executive rather than the elected monarch he is today. Presidents simply didn’t do as much as they do nowadays. Still, the nineteenth-century presidents were not simply do-nothing presidents. Some of these presidents accomplished a great deal during their terms in office. A few of these presidents could be counted among the worst, including the worst president ever. Others could be counted among the best American presidents. James K. Polk was one of these. He was the best president you have never heard of.

James K. Polk

So who was James K. Polk? That was the question many people were asking when the Democrats nominated Polk as their candidate in 1844. Polk was a dark horse who had seemingly come out of nowhere to secure the nomination as a compromise candidate after the convention was deadlocked between the supporters of Lewis Cass and Martin van Buren. Polk was not really that unknown, however. He actually had been active in national politics for some time being of Andrew Jackson, gaining the nickname “Young Hickory”, a reference to Jackson’s “Old Hickory.

Andrew Jackson

James Knox Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in Pineville, North Carolina. Growing up, James Polk adopted his mother’s stern Presbyterianism, becoming a hard, disciplined worker and a teetotaler his entire life. The Polk family moved to Tennesee in 1806 and it was in that state that Polk met his wife, Sarah Childress who he married in1824.

Sarah Childress Polk

He also began his political career as a Democrat who supported his fellow Tennesseean Andrew Jackson in the election of 1824. The two men developed a close friendship and Jackson supported Polk’s political career throughout his life.  Polk served as Representative from Tennessee from 1825 until 1839, becoming the chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee from 1833 to 1835 and Speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839. He went on to serve as Governor of Tennessee from 1839 to 1841. Polk was not, then a complete unknown, yet he did not have the resume that a potential president was expected to have. Previous presidents had served as Vice-President, Secretary of State,  Many presidents have since previously served as governors but so far no other Speaker of the House has become president. Polk went on to win the election of 1844, running against the much better known Whig candidate, Senator Henry Clay. It was a hard-fought and bitter election, but Polk won by a narrow margin, campaigning on a platform of manifest destiny and national expansion.

As president, James K. Polk accomplished more in his single term than many presidents have in two terms. He was a tireless worker, overseeing the operations of the federal government himself, relying only on his wife and nephew to assist him. James K Polk had four goals as president; reestablish the independent treasury system established by Jackson and Van Buren and ended by the Whigs, reduce the tariffs, settle the border of the Oregon Territory, and resolve the border dispute with Mexico. Polk accomplished all four of these goals by the end of his term, presiding over a successful war with Mexico and expanding the boundaries of the United States across the continent from sea to sea.

The first two items on Polk’s agenda were policies long supported by the Democratic Party. The Whigs, representing the interests of north-eastern industrialists had enacted high tariffs to protect the emerging American industry from foreign competition. The Democrats, which tended to be strongest in the agricultural South and West favored lower tariffs to discourage foreign retaliatory tariffs against American agricultural exports. Accordingly, President Polk had his Treasury Secretary, Robert J. Walker, draft a lower and more consistent set of tariff rates which narrowly passed Congress.

The Democrats also opposed any creation of the sort of central bank that the Whigs supported. Polk had assisted his mentor, Andrew Jackson in killing the Second Bank of the United States, and as president, Polk reestablished the Independent Treasury system that Jackson and Martin Van Buren had favored. In Polk’s system, the U. S. Treasury Department kept the public acted as a sort of central bank, keeping the federal revenues in its own facilities and managing the money supply. Polk’s Independent Treasury system lasted, with modifications until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

President Polk’s foreign policy was less partisan than his domestic policies. A policy of national expansion was popular throughout the United States and both parties backed the doctrine that it was the manifest destiny of the United States to spread from sea to sea. At the time of Polk’s accession to the presidency, the borders of the United States with Great Britain in the Pacific Northwest and Mexico in the southwest were not clearly defined. President Polk promised to resolve the disputes with both nations, by war if necessary.

The Oregon Territory in the Northwest extended north to the line of latitude 54º40′. Both the United States and Great Britain claimed the territory, but since it was originally sparsely settled, except by the Indians who didn’t count, neither side had pressed its claim and the territory was jointly administered since the Treaty of 1818. As the territory was settled, this arrangement became untenable and it became obvious that the conflicting claims would have to be settled. Polk and the Democrats had campaigned on the slogan “54º40′ or fight!”, arguing that the entire Oregon Territory should go to the United States. If Britain was unwilling to cede its claim to the territory, then America should go to war. In fact, Polk had no intention of going to war with Britain. Relations with Mexico were rapidly deteriorating, making war increasingly likely, and Polk did not wish to fight two wars at the same time. For their part, the British did not want a war with the United States, and the two nations quickly agreed to divide the territory along the existing border between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel in the Oregon Treaty.

54 40 or fight! Or not

President Polk would perhaps have preferred to resolve the disputes with Mexico over the boundaries of Texas and the Southwest with diplomacy offered to buy California and New Mexico, but the Mexicans, already humiliated by the annexation of Texas, were in no mood for negotiations. The ensuing Mexican War was Polk’s most controversial legacy and has been widely seen, then and since as an unwarranted act of aggression by the United States and attempt to expand slave territories. Whether or not Polk’s actions in provoking that was a subject for another post, but it cannot be denied that Polk proved to be a capable commander in chief appointing excellent commanding generals like Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott and prosecuting a successful war. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, America gained the Southwest, including the present-day states of California, Arizona, and New Mexico, bringing the United States of America to its present continental boundaries, except for the strip of land bought from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

President Polk declined to run for reelection in 1848. He had promised to serve only one term and he had accomplished everything he had intended as president. James Polk died on June 15 at the age of 53, just three months after he had left the White House. The cause of death is generally given as cholera, but Polk had been exhausted from his tireless work as president, and the true cause of death was overwork.

A president who kept all his promises and accomplished all his goals we could use a president like James K Polk again. He doesn’t deserve to be one of the forgotten presidents.

 

Jerry Springer, Trump and Civility

When I saw the headline “Jerry Springer Blames Trump for Society’s Lack of Civility“, I thought it must be from the Babylon Bee. Surely only a satire website would post an article with a title like that. I was wrong. It was the Huffington Post, and they were serious.

It’s no secret that Jerry Springer has seen more examples of the decline of civility in society than probably anyone.

So when he blames Donald Trump for the current rise in rudeness, maybe he’s onto something?

He thinks so anyway, as he told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle during a segment on Friday.

“I used to joke and say that my anger at the president is that he took my show and brought it to the White House,” Springer said.

He then talked about civility in a manner familiar to anyone who has seen one of his “final thoughts” that used to end his talk show.

“Civility is critical in terms of our norms, and we can’t function as a society unless we have norms of how to behave,” said Springer, the former mayor of Cincinnati. “You can’t pass enough laws to take care of every human interaction.”

I have to wonder if Jerry Springer has ever actually watched his own show. No president, not even Donald Trump has behaved in any way even remotely comparable to the sad wretches that Jerry Springer has had as guests. Perhaps Springer is somewhat aware of the irony of his complaining about a lack of civility as he went on to defend his show.

He’s one to talk about civility

“First of all, our show was about dysfunctional behavior, so obviously everyone who’s going to appear on the show is acting dysfunctionally,” Springer said. “That was the point of the show. But no one ever suggested, never did I do a final thought, and say, ‘This is the way you ought to behave.’”.

Springer then pointed out the folly of saying that because there’s “a crazy television show where you’ve got people that admittedly are dysfunctional” on the air, that “therefore, it’s OK to have an administration that’s dysfunctional.”

He then pointed out how “The Jerry Springer Show” was a step above the current administration in terms of class.

“When you have the president of the United States using language that even on our crazy show we’d bleep out, then society’s in trouble.”

The fact is that the standards of civility have been declining for decades before Donald Trump got into politics and Jerry Springer’s show has played no small in lowering those standards. For years, the Jerry Springer Show showcased people exhibiting deviant, dysfunctional, and just plain weird behavior for the amusement of his viewers. Jerry Springer is deluding himself if he thinks that a short final thought can mitigate the impact of forty-five minutes of degenerates fighting and throwing chairs at each other.

Donald Trump is not the cause of our nation’s increasing incivility, he is a symptom or more accurately the result. Donald Trump is what happens when the people who have been all too often the targets of this incivility decide to fight back. For too long, the normal people of this country, the humble people in flyover country who make the country work have been the targets of disdain and the incivility from an increasingly insular and out of touch elite. It has been perfectly acceptable to attack these people as ignorant, racist deplorables who are too stupid to know what’s good for them. It is only when the Deplorables begin to fight back that there is this sudden concern about civility.

The Deplorables tried to be civil when we formed the Tea Party and humbly asked that the governing elites actually follow the constitution and try to keep the country from going bankrupt. Tea Party protestors behaved peacefully and civilly. They did not smash windows and attack people. They even cleaned up after themselves. For their trouble, the media called them political terrorists, while praising violent, anarchist thugs. We have asked that the government do its job and protect our borders only to be called racists and compared to Nazis.

We tried being civil

We tried being civil and it didn’t work. So, we elected an uncivil man to the presidency. For all his faults, Donald Trump has been the only major political figure to really understand what the people in middle America really feel. He has been one of the few politicians who has actually tried to keep his campaign promises and has generally managed to do a good job. For his troubles, Trump has been attacked as few presidents have ever been attacked. He is on the verge of being impeached for no other reason than he won an election he was supposed to lose. Our own federal government, the people who are supposed to be working for us, has been conspiring against him. If Donald Trump falls, I think we are all about to become a whole lot less concerned with civility. People like Jerry Springer will be longing for the more civil time when Trump was president.

Jerry Springer ought not to blame Trump for a situation that was years in the making. If he must blame someone, he should look in a mirror.