President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden (“hereafter, “Hunter”), yesterday seemed to me worthy of a short note.  At some point in January before Inauguration Day, I’ll do a post on Mr. Biden’s conduct of the presidency, but the pardon will only be addressed here. 

While the media is harrumphing that the President “lied” when he indicated while running for a second term that he would not pardon Hunter, and I would have considered the action dishonorable a month ago, I now consider it to be irrelevant whether Mr. Biden was lying or simply had a change of heart since the election.  I also consider it irrelevant that President-Elect Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and the alt-right media propagandists will constantly cite Hunter’s pardon as rationalization for every disreputable action they hereafter take; masters of “whataboutism” that they are, if they didn’t have the pardon to yell about, they’d find something else.  (If they even care to justify their actions; I suspect that soon if not immediately, they won’t even bother to try.) 

It was the American people who pardoned Hunter.  The vast majority of American eligible voters – not only those who affirmatively voted for Mr. Trump, but perhaps as many more who didn’t care enough about our democracy and way of life to go to the polls to vote against him – blatantly demonstrated that they don’t give a damn about self-dealing, lying, or respecting the rule of law.  Why should Mr. Biden be expected to act in disregard of their evident sentiments?

I had already determined since the election that when referring to the actions of Mr. Trump and his acolytes in future posts, I wouldn’t allude much to the Constitution, federal law, or authorities such as The Federalist for what the Founding Fathers might have intended; Mr. Trump, MAGAs, Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court and a majority of the American people have already made a mockery of those standards.  So, reflecting purely by what seems right to me, since hearing of the pardon I have considered the mood of an 82-year-old man, whose heart has been broken by the majority of Americans’ willingness to turn their backs on the American principles he has spent his life defending, faced with the prospect that he would probably die with his son in a prison system controlled by the unscrupulous who hate him.  Of course, he would pardon his son.  I would.  Any parent reading this who wouldn’t should immediately place his/her children up for adoption.

I would submit that the pardon also represents a “Back at Ya” from Mr. Biden to the American people for their disregard of his half-century of service.  It would be from me, were I in his place.  (I know; “Back at Ya” is merely a euphemism; but someday my grandchildren may read these notes  😉 .)   

May the Biden Clan have a Very Merry Christmas.

President Abraham Lincoln was elected in November, 1860, but under the then-prevailing Constitutional provision, would not be inaugurated until March, 1861.  Mr. Lincoln began his trip to Washington, D.C., in February, 1861, after indicating in a Farewell Address to his fellow Springfield residents, “I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.”  Upon his railway trip east, he made a stop in Cincinnati on February 12, 1861 – his birthday – and addressed a group including German immigrant laborers.  It seems fitting to note his remarks in these pages as we celebrate Labor Day:

“I agree … that the working men are the basis of all governments … I am happy to concur … in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind. …

In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse.  It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke, than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new … if there are any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to throw aught in their way, to prevent them from coming to the United States.”

It only occurred to me as I was typing this note that my father-in-law, of German heritage, who I came to revere before he left us too soon, was born in Cincinnati in 1923, only a few generations after Mr. Lincoln made his stop in the Queen City.  It is improbable but seemingly not impossible that he, and if so, TLOML, our children and grandchildren, are descendants of one of the men that sought assurance from Mr. Lincoln that day in 1861 that the nation he had been elected to lead would give them a fair opportunity for a better life.  It is a certainty that our children and grandchildren are descendants of Irish immigrants who were derided when they landed here as limited, brawling Papists who could never be true Americans.

One might question whether our country is still as Mr. Lincoln described it over 150 years ago – i.e., whether it remains “extensive and new.”  I believe that it is.  The majority of Americans – ironically, certainly the vast majority of those who today seemingly most dread immigrant influences — need only drive short distances from their homes (if they need travel at all) to appreciate our vast expanses; those fearful should perhaps consider from whom they are descended.  It is the courageous, entrepreneurial, industrious, open spirit of those who have entered our nation over these last centuries that has made America great.  Our nation is and will remain forever “new” as long as we are willing to replenish our spirit and strength through the labor of both our native-born citizens and those who wish to join us to work to create a better life for themselves and their families.

Enjoy the Holiday.     

[Marking a national holiday usually prompts me to enter an optimistic note born of the festive nature of the occasion.  Given former President Donald Trump’s lead over President Joe Biden in most polls – despite Mr. Trump’s adjudicated criminality and abhorrent conduct of the presidency, which culminated in the storming of our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 – this anniversary of the founding of our nation seems to me instead the right time for each of us to ponder what sort of America we want.  A close friend of ours – an ardent Trump supporter, who vehemently maintains that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump — recently said to one of us, “Democrats are destroying this beautiful country of ours.”  No matter what else I have ever said or will ever say about Mr. Trump in these pages, there is one area in which I have absolute faith in him:  If he is elected in November, he will do what he says he will do.  What follows is a post published on September 30, 2021; since it seems even more relevant today than it was then, I am taking the liberty of reentering it here.]   

On the Quest for an American Apartheid

Earlier this week, I entered a link in these pages to Robert Kagan’s September 23, 2021, Washington Post essay, “Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here.”  There, Mr. Kagan wrote in part:

“Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — ‘losers,’ to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as strong and defiant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs, liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the ‘Mitch McConnell Republicans.’ His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity.”

While Mr. Kagan spent much of his piece focusing on the dangers to our system of government presented by former President Donald Trump and his nationwide network of Republican acolytes, in the passage above he referenced what I consider to be the primary source of our danger:  us.  We are no longer, as we were taught in the Pledge of Allegiance, “One nation … indivisible.”  United States citizens have two wildly divergent and deeply engrained inclinations as to what makes America.  Speaking in generalizations, one segment — demographically older, white, professed Christian, sexually straight, English-speaking, and more rural in outlook — views America to be the product of traditional American ethnicities, customs, cultural experience, and memory; the other segment — younger, multi-complexioned, multi-theistic/atheistic, multi-lingual, multi-sexual and -gender, and more urban, with relatively lesser regard for traditional American experience and memory – views America as a system of government providing each individual the freedom, within the purview of the safety of the body politic, to not conform to traditional American customs and values. 

What makes America … America?

If any reader of these pages is willing to review a volume s/he may well find abhorrent, I would recommend State of Emergency, written by former Republican Presidential Candidate Patrick Buchanan in 2006.  Mr. Buchanan, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan White Houses, is – although reportedly called out for bigotry during his career by conservative commentators William F. Buckley, Jr. and Charles Krauthammer – both fluent and unquestionably knowledgeable about American history and policy.  State of Emergency is primarily an assault on what Mr. Buchanan perceived as an unhealthy influx of Mexicans into American society.  It is a book that Mr. Trump, if he knew history, would have conceived; if he could write, would have written.  My familiarity with alt-right theorists isn’t that wide, but Mr. Buchanan’s candidacies were in retrospect clearly forerunners of Mr. Trump’s, and in State of Emergency he set forth what may be among the most articulate expression of the theories underlying what has become Trumpism:

“[Patriotism] is a passionate attachment to one’s own country – its land, its people, its past, its heroes, literature, language, traditions, culture, and customs. … There is a rival view … that America is a different kind of nation.  Unlike Ireland, Italy, or Israel, the United States is not held together by the bonds of history and memory, tradition and custom, language and literature, birth and faith, blood and soil [Note:  “Blood and Soil” was a Nazi slogan].  Rather, America is a creedal nation, united by a common commitment of all her citizens to a set of ideas and ideals. … Demonstrably, this is false.  Human beings are not blank slates.  Nor can they be easily separated from the abiding attachments of the tribe, race, nation, culture, community whence they came.  Any man or any woman, of any color or creed, can be a good American.  We know that from our history.  But when it comes to the ability to assimilate into a nation like the United States, all nationalities, creeds, and cultures are not equal.  To say that they are is ideology speaking, not judgment born of experience. … Should America lose her ethnic-cultural core and become a nation of nations, America will not survive.”

There are, ironically, corresponding echoes of Mr. Buchanan’s comments in Mr. Kagan’s essay:

“Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors and solid members of their communities. Their bigotry, for the most part, is typical white American bigotry, perhaps with an added measure of resentment and a less filtered mode of expression since Trump arrived on the scene. But these are normal people in the sense that they think and act as people have for centuries. They put their trust in family, tribe, religion and race. Although jealous in defense of their own rights and freedoms, they are less concerned about the rights and freedoms of those who are not like them. That, too, is not unusual. What is unnatural is to value the rights of others who are unlike you as much as you value your own.

…

The events of Jan. 6 … proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past. While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too.  People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life [Emphasis Added].”

I infer from some passages in Mr. Kagan’s column that he considers regular Trump supporters — if not the arguably more sophisticated and partisan Republican Party officialdom — credulous, and to actually believe Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud; he left at least me with the impression that he thinks that if regular Trump supporters understood the truth, they’d begrudgingly accept the will of the majority even if they disagreed with it.  If that is indeed his view, I am less sanguine.  I would suggest that the majority of regular Trump supporters are simply choosing to indulge in the self-delusion of a fraudulent electoral process because it enables them to rationalize the anti-democratic steps they are either taking or condoning; that in their deepest recesses, the majority do know that Mr. Trump lost, and – much more importantly – have come to viscerally grasp that if our nation’s current demographic and political trends continue unchecked, what they consider America to be (in Mr. Buchanan’s phrase, “bonds of history and memory, tradition and custom, language and literature, birth and faith, blood and soil”) will fade away.

To Mr. Kagan, “… the American experiment in republican democracy requires … what the Framers meant by ‘republican virtue,’ a love of freedom not only for oneself but also as an abstract, universal good; a love of self-government as an ideal; a commitment to abide by the laws passed by legitimate democratic processes … ”

To Mr. Buchanan, America is as he quoted Framer John Jay from Federalist No. 2:  “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs …”

I’ve previously noted in these pages that William Galston reported in Anti-Pluralism that Mr. Trump himself indicated in a speech in May, 2016, that “The only important thing is the unification of the people.  [T]he other people don’t mean anything [Emphasis Added].”  

It has become cliché that the voter suppression measures being enacted by cooperative Republican-controlled state legislatures and the current dust-ups in various states about alleged 2020 election fraud aren’t, despite Mr. Trump’s protestations, about the 2020 outcome, but rather to limit opposition voter turnout, lay a foundation of doubt about the veracity of our electoral processes, and have in place the mechanisms (state legislative overrides; friendly election officials; sympathetic judges) to avert any 2022 and 2024 electoral outcomes that Mr. Trump and his followers don’t like.  (They must have realized the need for these latter official safeguards given the determinative number of Independents and traditional Republicans that voted against Mr. Trump in 2020.)  Trumplicans have come to recognize that if all legally authorized voters cast ballots, they will lose significantly more than they win – either now, or in the foreseeable future.  They don’t believe that “constitutional and democratic norms,” to use Mr. Kagan’s phrase, constitute America.  Their measures are intended to save their America of (paraphrasing Mr. Jay) ancestry, language, religion, manner and custom.

Most of us have some background regarding South African Apartheid, which prevailed in some form from about 1910 until the early 1990s, most virulently starting in the late 1940s.  My own information was limited to an understanding that it was legalized subjugation by a small white minority (about 15% of the population) over the significant black majority (85%).  One of the theories for the institution of Apartheid, according to “The Origins of Apartheid” by the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, is that white Afrikaner Nationalists “feared that the Afrikaner’s very existence was threatened by the mass of Africans that confronted them in South Africa;” and that this fear resulted in “a range of laws that were passed … to preserve this ‘God-given Afrikaner identity [Emphasis Added].”  In “The Evolution and Fall of the South African Apartheid State:  A Political Economy Perspective,” John M. Luiz wrote, “[In 1948 the manifesto of the National Party (NP)] was that of apartheid and Afrikaner empowerment … [S]oon after coming into power, the government put into operation a three-pronged strategy designed to further the interests of Afrikaner nationalism. … The government set about Afrikanerising [sic] every state institution by appointing Afrikaners to every level of the civil service, state corporations, and security forces.”

No one that reads these pages will be a bit surprised that I am most comfortable with traditional norms.  Although I’ve been told by someone very close to me that I am privileged, I feel no guilt about being who I am.  In my estimation, the so-called “Woke” frequently overreact, sometimes grossly so.  That said, I subscribe to the view that America is a creedal nation; that it should be governed through a system that pursues the will of a majority of its citizens who are all able to vote under an impartially-administered set of fair rules, while at the same time furnishing sufficient safeguards for the civic and human rights of the minority.  I fear that those sympathetic to Mr. Trump and the actions of his acolytes think otherwise.  While I concede that many Trump supporters are seeking to protect what they view as America, a significant number seem unfazed by the prospect that preserving their America may involve the suppression of the will of a peaceful, multi-complexioned and -faceted majority of U.S. citizens.  Although I suspect that most would recoil if confronted with the notion, they are either actively or passively on a quest to establish an American Apartheid.

[Our friend’s vision of American beauty is clearly akin to that of Messrs. Buchanan and Trump.  As we enjoy pleasant gatherings in the coming days, and inevitably hear the singing of “America the Beautiful,” it seems fitting to consider:  What makes America beautiful to you?]

“[The] process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. … [I]t will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.  [Emphasis Added]”

• Alexander Hamilton, under the pseudonym, “Publius”; Federalist No. 68

Put aside the ten percent of our (or any nation’s) population who are either crazy or will, tacitly if not explicitly, acknowledge that they are governed by the base instincts to which former President Donald Trump appeals.  Everyone that reads these pages is old enough to remember that before Mr. Trump rode down his escalator – less than ten years ago – it was unthinkable – unthinkable! – that a convicted felon would remain a serious candidate for any high federal office.  Given Mr. Trump’s conviction yesterday on all 34 felony counts brought against him by the New York City Manhattan District Attorney, and notwithstanding the incessant attempt to delegitimize the verdict that has commenced in the alt-right propaganda silo and will continue through Election Day, it is now up to us as Americans – primarily up to the approximately 35% of our citizens, neither crazy nor consciously willing to succumb to their baser impulses, who up to now have indicated a willingness to vote for the former president this November — to decide: 

Do I believe in our judicial system, that any outcome arising from the orderly administration of justice is paramount to any respective substantive policy preferences I may have, and its result should be heeded and respected? 

Do I believe that my fellow American citizens – although they may reside in a very different environment from mine, and have markedly different perspectives on most issues facing our nation than I do – are capable of understanding their solemn responsibility, soberly weighing the evidence placed before them, and rendering an impartial verdict in a criminal trial?

For those of us who have family and friends who support Mr. Trump and hereafter question the impartiality of the New York City jury in our presence, I offer this as a possible response (an obvious trap, but I would submit nonetheless an above-the-belt way to make an important point):  “If Joe Biden was being criminally tried in [your home town], and you were on the jury, would you be able to put aside your dislike of him and impartially look at the evidence?”  If predictably your relative or friend replies in the affirmative — and I believe that the vast majority of our citizens of all political stripes would indeed take their duty seriously — the conclusion is easy: “If you think you could, why don’t you think those New Yorkers did?”

Whether a convicted felon wins the presidency of the United States this fall will say more about us as a people than it will about Mr. Trump.  It is we, not Mr. Trump, who will determine whether, in President Abraham Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg, our “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

We will celebrate eleven Federal Holidays during 2024.  As we are on the cusp of the Memorial Day Weekend – the unofficial start of summer for at least those of us who live in the northern reaches of the country – ponder whether, of the eleven, Memorial Day is not the most significant.

All of our Holidays have some enduring significance (or, at least virtually all; I suspect that we might take Columbus Day back if we could  😉 ); some are obviously vested with deep meaning. 

We observe the birthdays of three great Americans:  those of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on the same day in February and that of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in January; we recognize service on Labor Day and Veterans’ Day; and we acknowledge the nation’s tragic legacy of slavery and racism on Juneteenth National Independence Day.

New Year’s Day and Christmas Day each fit in their own conceptual categories.  New Year’s seems a required bookkeeping entry; not unimportant as such, but each new year is going to come around whether our nation continues or not.  As for Christmas – one of the holiest days of the year for Christians like me – one might nonetheless question its inclusion as a national holiday in a land with citizens of many faiths and no faith, governed by a Constitution that provides that its legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Thanksgiving Day is probably my favorite national holiday, and celebrates one of the most worthy of human emotions:  gratitude for the gifts one and one’s family and friends have received in this life.  That said, the gift of freedom that we enjoy and for which we give thanks every November had to be earned. 

Finally, what about the Fourth of July?  The date of our nation’s founding is an understandably hallowed day for all Americans.  Had the Founding Fathers not declared our independence, we’d have no country; the principle of equality upon which our nation is based would never have come into being.  But I would suggest that there are 20 guys in some corner of the world declaring independence from something or other as you read this who, like thousands before them, will never be heard of or from again.  The literal establishment of a nation is, of course, essential to its being; but I would submit that it is the subsequent offering of those who sacrifice to sustain and replenish it that is most worthy of our honor, tribute, and recognition.

Whether or not you agree with my characterization of the relative importance of our Federal Holidays, as we celebrate this Memorial Day, may we each give a moment to remember the sacrifices of the men and women we have marked this day to honor:  those who throughout our history have sacrificed to preserve and protect our freedom – both those who have given, in the words of Mr. Lincoln at Gettysburg, “the last full measure of devotion,” and also those who have ever after borne the physical and emotional scars of their sacrifice.

Enjoy the Holiday.