The Amicus Podcast of March 16 on six ways the current chief executive fails to honor the Oath of Office

The Amicus podcast of March 16 features Protect Democracy and its emphasis on the Take Care clause of the Constitution to counter the effects of the Trump regime:

“Take care clause refers to a clause in the U.S. Constitution that imposes a duty on the President to take due care while executing laws. The purpose of this clause is to ensure that a law is faithfully executed by the President.”

This clause appears in two places in the Constitution, one being the Oath of Office which the Chief Executive must affirm in order to legitimately be President.

In the podcast Protect Democracy’s Ian Bassin and Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick discuss six ways the incumbent fails to honor his oath:

Politicizing independent institutions, such as the Justice Department

Spreading disinformation (“Fake News,” Nine Thousand lies and counting)

Executive Power Grabs (False emergencies)

Quashing Dissent (Suggesting SNL satire of the president* “should be looked into”)

Delegitimizing Communities (Hispanic “invasion,” demonizing Muslims)

Corrupting Elections (Voter suppression, Gerrymandering)

Ferlinghetti turns 100

Ferlinghetti turns 100

America was founded by profound people.

Their descendants are incapable of profundity and would not want it if it were in their power to achieve it.

What they want, and what they produce:

Venting

and platitudes.

Shields and Brooks, discussing the social attack on Ralph Northam,(1) noted that it lacked “a path to redemption.”

This is a characteristic of a people who have lost the faculty of empathy and the concept of pluralism.

Martin Luther King appealed to the American mainstream of his time to “rise up and live out the meaning of their creed, that all men are created equal”; and the majority ended Jim Crow for people who did not look like them, in an enormous nationwide effort which required decades.

Contrast: When Hispanics and Native Americans, thinking Ta-Nehisi Coates was leading a civil rights crusade, came to join him, he said they were “disrespectful.” The situation of black people, he said, was unique and deserved its own focused examination.

It’s not that Ta-Nehisi lacked the concept of pluralism — that he might be called on to be his brother’s keeper — it’s that the progressive journalists who adulated him did not notice that this new version of the American crusade for reform wanted no part of empathy and altruism.

It’s all about ego and group aggrandizement. It lacks compassion and the milk of human kindness. It lacks public-spiritedness. The democratic disposition and concern for the public good is alien to it.

I Am Waiting
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe …
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

-*--

(1) Ralph Northam, an exemplary governor in Virginia, under social media attack because of blackface photo in the early eighties.

Hayek on The Liberal Founding

What in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense. — Hayek

The term “liberal” in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today. (1) — Hayek

F. A. Hayek, “Why I am Not a Conservative” 1960:

Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense. ... Some time before this, American radicals and socialists began calling themselves “liberals.” I will nevertheless continue for the moment to describe as liberal the position which I hold ... I shall later have to consider what would be the appropriate name for the party of liberty. The reason for this is ... that the term “liberal” in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today, ... (Emphasis added)

“Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change.”

This is why English conservative Andrew Sullivan, now an American citizen, believes that American conservatives are not at all conservative. Mocking “presidential,” as our current president* does; doing whatever he can to violate the Constitutional separation of powers, particularly with respect to the independence of the judiciary; doing the best he can to undermine and sabotage the guardrails of liberal democracy; and abrogating the faith and credit of the United States by subverting international treaty obligations, is not “opposition to drastic change”: It is a most un-conservative disruption of constituted authority and public order. More anarchy than prudence.

It resembles the childish narcissism described by Stu Rothenberg on a recent PBS broadcast:

Do Democrats want to feel good, or do they want to win? … Many Democrats just can't resist themselves. … Many of the younger Democrats, insurgents, anti-establishment ...

Trump's fawning prostrate “conservative” sycophants practice an insurgent, anti-establishment anarchy not remotely conservative. They didn't drain the swamp, they wallow in it. They didn't balance the budget, they instituted a burn-the-candle-at-both-ends era of heedless borrow-and-spend regime involving unprecedented budgetary stimulus during a fevered prosperity: The consequence will likely recapitulate W Bush's world-wide recession. They didn't Make America Great Again; they put a compulsive liar at the helm of the free world, who “immediately set about dismantling it.” America First has the same paradoxical flaw as Deutschland über alles: proclaiming “I am the greatest” is a clue that you're not.

The cultural Marxist left ideology of today is as dysfunctional, as illiberal, as anti-democratic, as the neo-Confederate Trump right ideology.

-*--

(1) “The term “liberal” in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today.” — The more extreme, radical, Marxist the left is today, the more the news media tend to characterize it as “liberal.” (Hayek: American radicals and socialists began calling themselves “liberals.”) 

As Orwell wrote, “The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”