Tag Archives: politics

No more coals to Newcastle.

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            By the mid-Thirties the international situation had begun to darken.  It was not yet Desperate.  The worst—another World War—might still be avoided.  Serious men had to deal with situations in a realistic way.  What were the situations? 

First, there was the conflict between the “democratic” and “status-quo” powers (Britain, France, and the United States) and the “authoritarian” and “revisionist”: powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Russia, and Imperial Japan.  Each of the “revisionist” powers desired to expand its territorial control over adjoining areas.  To accomplish these goals they would have to overthrow the system of international order—often called the Versailles settlement—created after the First World War.  Beyond that common goal they were often at odds among themselves. 

            Second, there were the military realities.  The conventional economic policy adopted to respond to the Depression (1929-1939) combined lower taxes with spending cuts, while limiting international trade (autarky).  Where countries stuck with this policy, military budgets suffered.  Where they did not stick with this policy, they rearmed faster.  Meanwhile, autarky spurred both isolationism and aggression.

            Third, Britain had three enemies threatening its global position: Germany in Europe, Italy in the Mediterranean, and Japan in the Far East.  It had the military resources to fight one major war at a time.  Britain lacked good allies.  America was deeply isolationist; Communist Russia hated capitalist counties—democratic or authoritarian; and France had been “bled white” in the First World War, while the Depression intensified partisan polarization.  If Britain fought one major power, the other two enemies would pile on.  Unless they were bought off or deterred. 

            In July 1934, Austrian Nazis had tried to seize power.  Hitler’s fingerprints were all over the failed coup.  The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ordered four army divisions to the border with Austria to deter German intervention.  In London and Paris, this seemed a good omen. 

            In March 1935, Nazi Germany declared that it would begin rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty.  In April 1935, representatives from Britain, France, and Italy met in the resort town of Stresa.  They agreed to resist any further German violation of the Versailles Treaty.  During the conference, the Italians raised the issue of Ethiopia.  Italy wanted to take over a big chunk of Ethiopia.  This was Italy’s bill for helping contain Germany.  The demand embarrassed the British, so it never made it into a written agreement.    

Mussolini had not abandoned his goals.  In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia.  Public opinion, but especially “progressive” opinion, in both Britain and France went wild.  Demands rang out for support for the League of Nations and economic sanctions on Italy. 

British and French leaders still hoped to save the Italian alliance against Germany.  In December 1935, British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met secretly with French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval.  They agreed on a plan that gave most of Ethiopia to Italy while leaving a fragment independent.  News leaked, public opinion revolted, the plan was abandoned, and Hoare resigned.  King George V said “Ah well Sam, no more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.” 

Lesson: If you want the “status quo” in one area you may have to accept “revisionism” in another.  Who is the main enemy?  What are the alternatives? 

War with China.

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            At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the defeated Nationalists withdrew from Chinese mainland territories.  Some entered the remote border areas of Laos and Thailand.  Most of them crossed the Formosa Straits to the island of Taiwan.  Here they created their own country. 

The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has never recognized Taiwan as independent.  In similar fashion, it refused to recognize any of the territorial losses during the age of European imperialism.  Where it could do so, it made good its claims: Shanghai and Tibet.  Other places had to wait for their “liberation.”  Recently, China has retaken Hong Kong and Macao.  Now, attention has shifted to Taiwan. 

            As part of President Richard Nixon’s “opening to China,” American policy toward Taiwan became more ambiguous.  In 1979, the United States ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan while re-establishing them with the PRC.  In 1982, the Reagan administration said that it would not pursue “a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or [of] ‘one China, one Taiwan’.”  All subsequent administrations have made clear American opposition of a declaration of independence by Taiwan.  They have believed that such a declaration would trigger an invasion by the PRC.  If that happened, then the United States might be drawn into a wart with China.  This would upset many apple-carts.[1]  So, American policy effectively has been to trust in the eventual evolution of the PRC toward the kind of society which Taiwan would willingly join.[2] 

            For the United States, the situation is more complicated than before.  For one thing, some serious observers of military affairs doubt that the United States now could win a conventional war with China in the Western Pacific.  Rearmament and rebuilding the defense industrial base could take some time.  What id China pounces before then?  For another thing, there is a suspicion that China’s aims extend well beyond merely regaining “lost” territory.  Taiwan forms the center of what strategists call the “first island chain” cutting off China from easy access to the Pacific.  Japan and the Philippines are the two other links in the chain, but it is anchored at either end by South Korea and Vietnam.  What if the Chinese determination to “restore” Taiwan forms merely an entering wedge for a larger plan of aggression?  For yet another thing, Taiwan has become a major industrial economy.  In particular, it is home to the Taiwan Semi-conductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC if you want to go check the contents of your IRA).  Chinese rule would both mark a further shift in the balance of power and harm America’s economy. 

            In 2023, the CIA assessed that Xi Jinping had instructed military leaders to “be ready [to invade Taiwan] by 2027.”[3]  In mid-December 2025, the navy of the PRC carried out maneuvers in the waters around Taiwan.  The 90-ship group was, in the view of the Taiwanese military, practicing a “blockade exercise.”[4]  Blockade would be one way of bringing Taiwan to its knees.  Bombing would be another.  Invasion—amphibious and airborne–would be yet another. 

            All this is worth public discussion.  Now and not later.  We don’t have much “later.” 

[1] See David Sacks in While Pledging to Defend Taiwan from China, Biden Shifted on Taiwan Independence. Here’s Why That Matters. | Council on Foreign Relations 

[2] See: Wilkins Micawber.  Sounds like goofy American optimism, until you consider the alternative. 

[3] “The World at a Glance,” The Week, 14 February 2025, p. 9. 

[4] “The World at a Glance,” The Week, 20 December 2024, p. 9. 

The Hundred Days.

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            Elected as President in November 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) took the oath of office on 4 March 1933.  His inaugural address mixed optimism with slashing attacks on those whom he blamed for the country’s problems.  He would seek “broad Executive powers to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” 

            Good for his word, FDR launched an astonishingly fast transformation of the government and its policies.  This first sprint became known as “the Hundred Days.”  He ordered banks closed to halt panics; called Congress into a special session beginning on 8 March 1933; sent Congress new banking laws that were passed and returned to FDR for his signature in less than a day; sent Congress a bill to reduce government spending, including cuts to the pensions of military veterans; and sent Congress a bill to begin repealing Prohibition. 

            FDR began the regulation of the markets for stocks and bonds with the Securities Act of [May] 1933.  In 1935, it was followed up in the Creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to make sure banks complied.  The Banking Act of 1933 (commonly called the Glass-Steagall Act) required the separation of commercial and investment banking. 

            Early on, FDR adopted a policy of promoting inflation, chiefly with the aim of reducing the burden of debt on borrowers.  On 18 April, he issued an Executive Oder regulating the outflow of gold from the United States; shortly thereafter Congress passed a resolution abolishing the anti-inflationary “gold clauses” in public and private contracts.  In July, he told the American representatives to an international economic conference to refuse to “peg” the dollar to any fixed exchange rate.  In November, FDR would order government purchases of gold to pump paper currency into the economy.  By January 1934, the currency had been devalued by 40 percent.  Thereafter, the Gold Act of 1934 empowered the Treasury to manage both domestic credit and the international value of the dollar. 

            He then turned to revolutionizing basic government policies on the economy.  He had been persuaded of the merits of central planning of the economy.  On 16 March 1933, FDR sent Congress a bill to create an Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) that would restrict the massive production that had created a glut on the market.  The AAA would limit farm production in order to raise the price of key staple crops—and therefore the income of farmers.  The markets were drowning in corn, wheat, cotton, and hogs.  Production would be cut back.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act passed Congress on 12 May. 

            At the same time, FDR pushed for a National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).  As in agricultural policy, the bill broke with the traditional reverence for the “free market” and “laissez-faire.”  The Act encouraged business sectors to organize markets, production, and prices to stop over-production and stabilize prices.  To these measures was added a Public Works Administration to put the unemployed back to work until business revived.  Mixed in with the NIRA’s planning element were other long-sought reform goals: shorter working hours, higher pay, the right to unionize, an end to child labor.  The NIRA passed on 16 June. 

            There was much else.  TVA; CCC; FDIC; “relief,” later with a work requirement added.    The point is that FDR moved fast and broke with all sorts of precedent.  People saw him acting with energy and confidence, even if no one knew if it would work.  It was worth a shot. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 6.

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            President Donald Trump tasked “Special Government Employee” Elon Musk with downsizing government.[1]  Musk, it is often pointed out, is an “unelected billionaire.”[2]  Musk immediately exhibited the drive and ruthlessness that made him a billionaire in the first place.  In his own offensive phrase, he and his myrmidons “spent the weekend feeding US AID into the wood chipper.”[3]  He also sent his people into the Treasury Department Finance section, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Education.  In most cases, they seemed to be after the computer and record systems.[4]  Along the way, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) e-mailed federal employees offering a choice between resigning now and receiving eight months’ pay or risking being fired at some point in the future. 

            Criticism followed.  Senator Charles Schumer warned that “an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”  Yale historian Timothy Snyder called it “a coup.”  Journalist David Rothkopf warned of the approach of “the worst form of malevolent dictatorship.”  Senator Elizabeth Warren insisted that “Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people.”[5]

            Lawyers saw the Musk task force’s actions as “wildly illegal” and unconstitutional.  Neither they nor President Trump can close down federal agencies created by Congress or impound funds appropriated by Congress. 

            A final, perhaps revealing, criticism is of the people doing Musk’s work.  They are “a coterie of engineers barely out of college.”  They are “young” and they are “engineers.”  In contrast, Charles Schumer is 74, Elizabeth Warren is 75, Dick Durbin is 79, Mark Warner is 70, Amy Klobuchar is 64, Tammy Baldwin is 62, Cory Booker is 55, Chris Murphy is 52.  All are lawyers.  Many of the younger-than-them people on their staffs doubtless are also lawyers. 

            Do engineers and lawyers think in different ways?  Not being one or the other, it’s difficult to say.  However, law schools instill a reverence for precedent.[6]  Engineering schools emphasize problem-solving and simplification.[7]  On the second issue of older versus younger, there are both stereotypes and more evidence-based analyses.[8]  It should surprise no one that young engineers think and act differently from aged lawyers.  One thing that is clear is that the “Old Order” is unable to address our national problems.  Will a “New Order” make them worse? 

[1] Musk is commonly identified as “the world’s richest person,” rather than as the “creator of several massively innovative companies—including one that may have to bring back two astronauts stranded on Gilligan’s Satellite.

[2] All Cabinet members are “unelected.”  According to a 2021 article in Forbes, the median wealth in the “poor man’s cabinet” of Joe Biden was $5.5 million; average wealth was $6.8 million.  The figures were far higher for the first Trump cabinet, and for the first Obama cabinet.  Musk isn’t a cabinet-member, but the principle is the same. 

[3] Bing Videos  Well, he likes the Coen Brothers. 

[4] “Musk launches offensive on government agencies,” The Week, 14 February 2025, p. 4. 

[5] Although, in fact, the American people delegated all those powers to their elected government.  The current head of the Executive Branch of that government is Donald Trump. 

[6] Precedent – Wikipedia 

[7] There is an interesting analysis at Do Engineers Think Differently? Yes, Learn The 6 Ways | Engineer Calcs

[8] See: Old Versus Young: The Cultural Generation Gap | The Pew Charitable Trusts and II. Generations Apart — and Together | Pew Research Center 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 5.

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            From the adoption of the Constitution until 1974, Presidents were assumed to have the power—inherent in their office–to not spend money appropriated by Congress.[1]  In 1801, Thomas Jefferson chose to prioritize debt reduction over national defense.  He impounded $50,000 that had been appropriated for gunboats requested by the Navy.  Many of his successors impounded funds. 

By the early 1970s, members of Congress believed that President Richard Nixon was abusing his official powers in a variety of ways.  One example came in his impoundment of appropriated funds.  Nixon held up spending on “water pollution control, education and health programs and highway and housing construction.”[2]  The amount came to “$53.2‐billion during its first five years in office.”[3]  In the context of other struggles with President Nixon, House Speaker Carl Albert called it a struggle between Congress and “one-man rule.”  On a broadly bipartisan basis, Congress struck back.  The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 barred the President from impounding funds appropriated by Congress.[4]  It did permit a Presidential request for “rescission” if approved by Congress.[5]  Already mired in “Watergate,” Nixon signed the bill into law.  As a result of Nixon’s surrender, the law was never tested before the Supreme Court.  Do extreme cases make good law? 

That doesn’t mean that Presidents think that impoundment is a bad idea.  Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all supported the restoration of the authority stripped from the office because of that damn fool Nixon.  Other unsuccessful candidates for President—John McCain, Al Gore, and John Kerry—supported restoring the authority to impound.[6]   

Which brings us to President Trump.  During the campaign, he promised to “squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”[7]  From the get-go he stopped appropriated spending on D.I.E. initiatives; payments to non-governmental organizations; foreign aid (for a 90 day review period); and all federal loans and grants (almost immediately rescinded).  Trump wants to bring the issue to the Supreme Court for the hearing it didn’t get in the 1970s. 

The key issue here is self-restraint.  The ballooning national debt, fueled by unbalanced annual budgets, threatens the financial stability of the government.  Nixon’s abuse of the powers of his office went well beyond what other presidents had done, alarming many people in both parties.  Trump seems determined to disrupt the established “way we do things around here” patterns that have taken the United States to the brink of multiple crises.  He, too, is alarming people in both parties.  He wouldn’t be on the verge of shifting the balance of power if all of us had shown more self-restraint.  Not meant as an exculpation of Trump.   

[1] Impoundment of appropriated funds – Wikipedia 

[2] Richard D. Lyons, “Nixon’s Impounding of Billions in Federal Money Is Complicated Issue, Abounding in  Misconceptions,” NYT, 7 October 1973. 

[3] Compared to $39 billion impounded by Lyndon Johnson. 

[4] Passed by the House 385-23 (204 Democrats and 181 Republicans voting in favor); passed by the Senate 80-0 (50 Democrats and 29 Republicans). 

[5] Since then, Congress has rarely approved rescission requests, so Presidents rarely request them.     

[6] President Joe Biden did not.

[7] Charlie Savage, “Are Presidents Empowered to Block Spending Authorized by Congress?” NYT, 29 January 2025. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 4.

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            “Teflon Don.” 

            Republicans long accused Democrats of waging “lawfare” against Donald Trump, either to bait the Republicans into making him their candidate so that Joe Biden could beat him in November 2024 or to render him incapable of holding office without asking the voters what they preferred.  There is something to be said on both sides of some of the cases, and nothing at all that can be said against others.[1]   

            In early December 2024, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a judge to dismiss—without prejudice—two cases against President-elect Donald Trump.  Department of Justice policy bars prosecuting a sitting president.  In late January 2025, Judge Juan Merchan decided that he couldn’t “encroach…on the highest office in the land” by jailing President-elect Donald Trump for his conviction in the New York City hush-money case.  The conviction stands.[2] 

            Soon afterward, President Trump issued a blanket pardon for almost 1,600 people convicted by federal prosecutors for their part in the 6 January 2021 riot.  Why did he do this when two-thirds of Americans opposed pardons for “violent” offenders?  Even his Vice President, J.D. Vance had not expected him to go that far. 

            Trump went beyond just releasing the worst of his supporters.  He appointed another supporter, Edward Martin, Jr., as interim United States attorney for Washington, D.C.  Martin immediately ordered that all pending cases be dismissed.  Then he ordered a review of the use of felony obstruction charges against the rioters.  Democrats feared that the released rioters might feel empowered to threaten their prosecutors.[3] 

            On his way out the door, “I’m-still-President” Joe Biden—predictably, understandably—broke his promise not to pardon his son Hunter Biden.  He pardoned him for both those things of which he had been convicted and of anything else he might have done since 2014.  Biden argued that Hunter had been “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” by Biden’s own Justice Department.[4]  Believing that Trump would seek “revenge” on everyone who displeased him, Biden issued pardons to people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, the members of the House 6 January investigative committee, and the Capitol police officers who testified before the committee.  He also pardoned another five members of his family.[5] 

            Angry Special Counsels took their last shots.  David Weiss, who had investigated Hunter Biden, denounced Joe Biden’s “baseless allegations.”  Jack Smith, who had investigated Trump, insisted that he could have convicted him if he hadn’t been able to shelter in the White House.[6] 

“I fought the law and the law…lost.”  Grubby versus Filthy. 

[1] Alvin Bragg and Laetitia James both ran for their state elective offices with promises to prosecute Trump.  Fani Willis may have had a partisan motivation, but she built a substantial (perhaps overly ambitious) case.  Jack Smith seems to have had Trump dead to right on the purloined documents case.  He probably had at least as good a case as did Willis on the election interference case.  For Republican charges of “lawfare,” see “Trump: Beyond the reach of law,” The Week, 13 December 2024, p. 17. 

[2] “Trump: Prosecutions end with a whimper,” The Week, 24 January 2025, p. 17. 

[3] “Impunity: MAGA violence is A-OK,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 16. 

[4] “Biden: Why he broke his promise not to pardon Hunter,” The Week, 13 December 2024, p. 6. 

[5] “Biden: A flurry of last-minute pardons,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 17. 

[6] The Week, 24 January 2025, pp. 6 and 7. 

“The System Is Blinking Red” 3.

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            In 1989-1990, the Soviet Union collapsed.  With it went the credibility of autarkic, centrally-planned economies.  Determined to maintain its monopoly on power, the Communist Party of the Peoples’ Republic of China hastened to adopt a new course.  It opened China to the global market and capitalist methods.  Essentially, use foreign-supplied capital and technology to become the workshop of the world.  Start by making cheap simple stuff, then climb up the ladder.  Pull its people out of impoverished rural life into urban prosperity.  Pull China out of Developing Country status into global power. 

American business and political leaders took an optimistic view of these developments.  China would be a cheap producers of consumer goods for Western markets, raising living standards for Western peoples by lowering costs.  China would become a consumer of high-end  Western products and expertise.  An economic revolution in China would create a growing—and increasingly assertive—middle class.  This would nudge China toward political democracy.[1]  Naturally, there would be some job losses suffered in the West.  Experience with the rise of Japan in the 1970s and 1980s showed that displaced workers would shuffle into new jobs. 

In 2001, China won admission to the World Trade Organization.  Many restrictions on Chinese exports were removed.  Things did not work out as planned.  China moved much faster than expected and on a much larger scale than had been expected.  “Many U.S. manufacturing towns couldn’t compete.”[2]  Factories downsized.  Manufacturing shrank as a source of employment in many towns.  Some workers were laid off, but most were attritted through retirement.  They were not replaced.  Most of the displaced workers were White and Black men without a college education. 

Then, it seemed, the hard-hit areas bounced back.  They didn’t return to the original state.  Instead, “affected areas recover[ed] primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred.  Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreign-born immigrants, women, and the college-educated, who find employment in relatively low-wage service sectors such as medical services, education, retail, and hospitality.”[3] 

Readers may question the argument that “towns” came back, while “workers” did not.  “Those communities experienced higher unemployment, lower wages, higher use of food stamps, higher disability payments, higher rates of single parenthood and child poverty, and elevated mortality.”[4]  Would make a good movie if John Sayles was still working.[5] 

The natural response is to connect all this distress to the rejection of globalism and—eventually—to the rise of Donald Trump.  What stands out, though, is the failed hopes of the people who set China policy and their failed sense of social solidarity when the choices they made had a harmful impact on ordinary people.  Now US AID is on the block. 

[1] That’s how it had worked in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  Why wouldn’t it be the same with China? 

[2] Justin Lahart, “How ‘China Shock’ Upended U.S. Workers,” WSJ, 5 February 2025.  Lahart is reporting on a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by David Autor, et al. 

[3] Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization | NBER 

[4] Justin Lahart, “How ‘China Shock’ Upended U.S. Workers,” WSJ, 5 February 2025. 

[5] See: “Sunshine State” (2002) and “Casa de los babys” (2003).   

American attitudes toward immigration.

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            We are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.[1]  Yet “Americans” have often been ambivalent about—or hostile to—new arrivals.  In the 17th Century Native Americans made repeated attempts to wipe out English settlers.  The early European settlements, especially those of the English, were starved for settlers.  They generally welcomed newcomers with open arms. 

            After independence from Britain had been won, the new United States had to define its own policy on immigration.  Generally, the new nation desired immigrants.  Immigrants could bring valuable skills, and the labor to transform the continent’s abundant resources into national wealth.  All residents enjoyed the same civil and legal rights.  The initial residency requirement for citizenship was two years, later set at five years.  No one coerced them to abandon their own culture, or even language. 

            In the 1830s began a great wave of immigrants, predominantly Germans and Irish.  Trouble arose from the reality that “new” Americans were not immediately and might never be “real” Americans in the eyes of the “old” Americans.  Increasingly, the “voluntary” Americans were drawn from countries where absolute monarchy prevailed.  This included all those who belonged to the “absolute monarchy” of the Papal Catholicism.[2]  Other American feared the United States would be swarmed by left-wing radicals in flight from more repressive regimes. 

“Nativism” arose as a political force, culminating in the American or “Know Nothing” Party in the 1850s.  They expressed Thomas Jefferson’s earlier fears that people raised under ana absolute monarchy could not learn how to participate in a democratic republic.[3] “Nativism” made impressive progress until swamped by the larger crisis of the Civil War. 

After the Civil War, as any textbook will tell you, the country bounded forward in both industrialization and the exploitation of the Trans-Mississippi West.  Vast amounts of natural resources (minerals, timber, grains and livestock) just needed manpower to put them to work.  British, German, Irish (and French-Canadian in New England) immigrants poured in.  Anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism revived, and a new anti-Socialism joined them as inspirations to immigrants.  Then, in the 1880s, there began a tidal wave of “new immigration” from Southern and Eastern Europe.  Poles, Russian Jews, Italians, Hungarians, Greeks, and others arrived in huge numbers.  Only the First World War (1914) paused most European emigration. 

This latter immigration stirred bubbling cauldron of late-19th and early-20th Century social, economic, cultural, and political strife.  Both “advanced” thinkers and organized labor championed the limits; but equivalent figures argued for inclusion over exclusion.  The contest produced the first laws restricting European immigration (1923-1924).   The laws have been revised on several occasions, but the United States has been a country of regulated and restricted immigration for a century.  Recently, mass defiance of the law has combined with important political and economic forces turning a blind eye to the issue has made it an explosive problem. 

So, we go back and forth in a debate that is ever-changing and ever-the-same. 

See: Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted; Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door. 

[1] Including those whose ancestors crossed the Bering land bridge when it was still above sea level.  

[2] The “Syllabus of Errors” (1877) summed up more than a century of Papal anti-modern, anti-republican, and anti-liberal thought.  “He was agin it,” as Will Rogers said of a fundamentalist Protestant preacher’s views on sin. 

[3] Jefferson came down on both sides of many issues.  This is one such. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 3.

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            Among President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) bearing in some way in illegal immigration were ones: declaring an emergency on the southern border; ordering 1,600 troops to the border to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); stopping the claiming of asylum at the border; revoking President Joe Biden’s EO granting special immigrant status to about 600,000 refugees from Venezuela’s Marxist dictatorship; increasing those eligible for “fast-track deportations”; declared drug cartels (which also engage in people smuggling) as “terrorists”; taking the Border Patrol asylum app off-line; and revoking an earlier ban on ICE raids on sanctuaries like churches, schools, and hospitals.[1]  In a blow at “sanctuary cities,” the Department of Justice threatened to prosecute state and local officials who refused to comply with deportation orders. 

The search for illegal immigrants got underway immediately.[2]  ICE corralled 5,000 illegal immigrants in the first weeks.  So did the expulsions.  Military planes began ferrying deportees back to their home countries.  Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia got the first returnees.  When Columbia tried to refuse, Trump threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on imports from Columbia.  The president of Columbia caved-in. 

Democrats’ criticism of President Trump’s actions took three lines.  First, Trump’s EO modifying the eligibility for “birthright citizenship” met a barrage of denunciations from Democrats.  “The 14th Amendment says what it means, and it means what it says” asserted Connecticut’s Attorney General.[3]  Twenty-two states sued to block the order. 

Second, some critics saw a much greater import to the “birthright” EO.  Closing the border on the grounds that the massive illegal immigration “constitute[s] and invasion” creates the possibility that President Trump could invoke the Alien Enemies Act,[4] and then deploy “extraordinary new powers.”  So, we’re closer to fascism in this view.  On the other hand, the half of the country that elected Trump supports the mass deportations of illegal immigrants, while the half that failed to elect Kamala Harris oppose mass deportations.[5]  So, we’re living with the results of a free and fair—if tight–election in this view. 

Third, it won’t work.  A human tide of people from troubled areas of the world want to get to places of greater safety and opportunity.  They will keep coming regardless of the measures taken to stop them.  “Migrants don’t simply disappear by wishing them away.”[6]  A Trump supporter could offer two counter-arguments.  On the one hand, look at the European model.  They pay foreign countries to block passage.  On the other hand, Trump isn’t wishing them away.  He’s launching a massive effort to actually stop migration.  Time will tell. 

[1] “Asylum halted as immigration crackdown begins,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 5. 

[2] “Thousands arrested in immigration crackdown,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 5. 

[3] Which sounds a lot like “Originalism.”  Originalism – Wikipedia  That’s OK: John Marshall Harlan’s lonely dissent on Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) adopted the same perspective.  However, it is a hard swerve away from the well-established liberal position that the Constitution is a “living document” which jurist must interpret in light of changing times. 

[4] One of the Alien Sedition Acts passed in 1798; unlike the others, this Act won support from many Jeffersonians and was never repealed.  See: Alien and Sedition Acts – Wikipedia 

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 17.  The Boston Globe put the share of supporters at 55 percent. 

[6] Juliette Kayyem in the Atlantic, quoted in “Thousands arrested in immigration crackdown,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 5. 

Civil Society.

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            “The order [halting government payments to external bodies] sparked chaos at universities, charities, local government, and other bodies reliant on federal funding,…”[1]  Sort of an off-the-cuff statement that arouses no alarm unless your ox is one of those getting gored.  Still, it’s worth thinking about a little bit. 

            One way of thinking about the issues is the following.  Jurgen Habermas (1929– ) is a brilliant German philosopher.[2]  OTOH, so was Karl Marx.  What did that get us?  “Boiler suits, prison camps, and a damn long march to nowhere.”[3]  One of the many interesting ideas propounded by Habermas, on the basis of deep learning in a host of areas, is the distinction between the “public sphere” and the “private sphere.”  He defined the “public sphere” as “made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state.”  The “private sphere,” in contrast, the place where “an individual enjoys a degree of authority and tradition, unhampered by interventions from governmental, economic or other institutions.”  Religion, family life, sexual relations in private are current examples of this “private sphere.”[4]   Taken together, they create “civil society.”  By “civil society” is meant “1) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government or 2) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that advance the interests and will of citizens.”[5] 

            In recent-for-me times, the Czech writer and dissident (even when he was in power), Vaclav Havel[6] used the term civil society to describe all the groups menaced by Communism’s relentless drive to subordinate every person and group into conformity with the state’s wishes. 

            Here’s the thing: “universities, charities, local government, and other bodies” is pretty much an operational definition of “civil society.” 

            The institutions of civil society are supposed to be “individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.”  The fact that they are “reliant on federal funding” indicates just how deeply the institutions of “civil society” have been penetrated and compromised by the State.  With the money comes regulations, requirements, audits. 

 Yet, “the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions” are supposed to “advance the interests and will of citizens.”  They are supposed to engage in discussion and even confrontation.  Hard to do when you’re the hired help. 

None of this is the product of a sinister conspiracy.[7]  It’s just convenience, then inertia. 

[1] “Trump orders cause whiplash in Washington,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 4. 

[2] Jürgen Habermas – Wikipedia

[3] Jim Prideaux in John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).    

[4] However, these things can shift over time.  For the Greeks and for Europeans in the Reformation, religion was a public concern that required continual and public assent, but the authorities didn’t much care if you whacked your kid.  “Boys have always been beaten and it would be a bad day for the world if boys ceased to be beaten.”  C.S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower.  The statement is made during the run-up to the murder of a sadistic Navy captain.

[5] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society  NB: I reversed the order of the terms because I want to consider a particular point. 

[6] Guy reminds me a bit of Roger Williams.  Turn left when everyone else turns right.  Turn left because everyone else turns right.  “Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one.”—W.S. Auden. 

[7] Regardless of what Republican or Democratic activists may believe.