As of yesterday, a second attempt on former-President Trump’s life was stopped. We condemn violence of any kind, certainly assassination attempts, in the strongest terms possible.
The whole purpose of our Founders was to establish a nation of ordered liberty.
It is fundamental to our system of ordered liberty that:
1. Equality, public safety, fairness, dignity, economic opportunity, and freedom of speech and assembly consistent with public order for all persons including but not limited to all ethnicities, so-called “races”, cultures, religions or secularism, handicap, intellectual level, culture, sex, origin, culture or other distinguishing characteristics;
2. Due process of law to enforce the public safety enforced impartially and under the restraints of the U.S. Constitution to protect defendants through judicial process and representation of counsel;
3. Professional police force supported to protect public safety, well-compensated, with frequent field-training to counteract violence and prevent violation of property, with special attention to an orderly measured and proportionate use of force to avert escalating violence, alert also to the safety of the subject of police custody or restraint;
4. Public safety to include access to adequate healthcare irrespective of income;
5. Opportunity for employment without discrimination and with sufficient income for shelter and adequate nourishment;
6. Education for children, prekindergarten and grades 1-12 that nourishes the dignity of the child and challenges the child in arithmetic-math, grammar-literature, history, sciences, and vocational skills, with regard to the individual gifts of the child, to prepare the child for college or career;
7. A balance and separation of powers, restraint of the “unitary Executive” doctrine and restoration of the restraining powers of the House, the Senate and Federal Judiciary;
8. A strong Army, Air Force and Naval Services (Navy, Marines and Coast Guard (with the latter’s dual status) to safeguard American air and shores and to deter anti-Democratic forces abroad.
One of the most powerful, beautiful statements of the philosophy of Ordered Liberty was by one of America’s truly great jurists, Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (24 May 1870 – 9 July 1938) in Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937) spoke of:
[Rights that form] the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty . . . a "principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental."
Such a system of ordered liberty requires persons who run for office to support core values.
Violence and race-baiting are the characteristics of Italian Fascism of Mussolini, the Third Reich with its assortment of genocidal monsters, the KKK and Jim Crow.
Assassination and race-baiting are actual practices of the above-named perversions of organized violence and undermine and destroy a Democracy and Republic.
We must reject and condemn any political violence whatsoever. We condemn the two attempts on the life of former President Donald J. Trump and demand accountability.
We equally and unremittingly condemn the race-baiting of the right.
When Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance have been confronted, as Vance was both by CNN’s Dana Bash and NBC’s Kristen Welker, with their race-baiting of Haitian immigrants, they doubled down on vicious attacks.
Specifically, ABC reports that the Mayor of Springfield, Ohio attributes bomb-threats that have closed down schools and colleges to the race-baiting, with vicious and vile claims of Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets – cats and dogs.
It was repulsive to watch VP Candidate J.D. Vance double down after NBC’s Kristen Welker pointed out there was no evidence for Vance’s rumor of pet-kidnapping.
But there is an additional point.
Kristen Welker said “there was no evidence” of petnapping. J.D. Vance cited rumor and repeated the racist lie.
I take the tale to be of whole cloth, a made-up lie.
But the divisiveness and the vileness of the race-baiting doesn’t depend on contingent events.
The racists cannot come up with a single incident. But an incident, or two incidents, which I do not believe exist, would change and prove absolutely nothing.
A minority-group must never, ever be targeted from a rumored or actual offense of an individual. Not ever.
J.D. Vance and Trump are Ivy League products.
My God, Ivy League candidates racially bait violence against minorities.
Josef Goebbels, the Reichspropagandaminister, earned a Doctorate in Fine Literature at the great Heidelberg University.
Goebbels knew what he was doing. Tell the lie. Repeat the lie. The lie will be believed.
Goebbels propagated a movie in which characters depicting Jews were transformed into human-size rats.
Vance and Trump dehumanize minorities.
Vance and Trump, with their fancy Ivy League credentials, engage in vicious, loud, persistent demagoguery of race-baiting that has resulted in violence against minorities.
This is well outside the core of American values. This is the practice within the regimes of Mussolini and . . . others . . .
Yes, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are targeting a racial-group – Haitians.
That must never, ever be done. Not ever.
One would have thought after the great moral movement of the last 80-years, The Civil Rights Movement – Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Medgar Evers, and one would have thought that after defeating the idea of “Race” through the utter destruction of the racist-genocidal Third Reich that we would be forever embued with the spirit of human equality.
Quite frankly, the greatest Statesman within my living memory, greater than her husband – who was one of our greatest Presidents and who was one of the greatest guarantor of human equality and liberty, namely, FDR – Eleanor Roosevelt had endowed us with the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Public discourse must be in the spirit of the core values of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evars, John Lewis.
Our core values are set out in The Federalist, where Alexander Hamilton – one of our greatest Statesmen ever, and James Madison with John Jay, each with a deep knowledge of the great historian Polybius, who, in his Histories – detailing Rome’s three wars with Carthage – set out the pillars of an ordered, sustainable republic.
Polybius pointed out that the Greek city-states had not lasted long because even an enlightened king’s rule would devolve to tyranny; tyranny would be overcome by elites who overthrew the dictator; the enlightened elites would devolve into a greedy oligarchy; the masses would overthrow the exploiters and set up a democracy; the democracy would devolve into mob rule.
Polybius recommended a system that balanced kingdom, oligarchy, and democracy through a balance and separation of powers, which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison translated into separate, equal branches of Legislature, Executive and Judiciary (Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution, respectively) to countervail and restrain each other.
Right now, the forces defending traditional core values are the Democrats.
It is extremely unhealthy for our Society for the Conservatives, who, though I disagree fundamentally with their economic-political philosophy, have much to offer American Society and who are a counterbalance against extreme one-sidedness in public policy.
We need Conservatives to balance the economic and political debate.
There are many, many Conservatives who want responsible Conservative leadership well-within the core values established in Polybius, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, as represented by the political economics of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
I am an Elizabeth-Warren/Bernie Sanders Social Democrat. I vote pretty much straight Democrat.
But I welcome our brothers and sisters of the Friedman/Hayek tradition and want to empower them to balance my own side on the political spectrum.
But the right is co-opted by the racist extreme who demagogue against minorities and enflame hatred, which is totally destructive to ordered liberty and our American way of life and resembles the Third Reich.
The only way to restore a responsible, liberty-loving Conservative base with core-American values – and make no mistake, we need the balance of Milton Friedman/Friedrich Hayek Conservatives, who argue for a free market and fiscal restraint – the only way to empower traditional Conservatives is to destroy and bury MAGA.
Great article.
Thank you for this.