Picking the Wrong Side

 

 Kids my age who started grade school in the mid-1950s had ideas about World War II. Most of our fathers had served in it, and all of our parents had lived through it. At varying levels of knowledge we understood that it had been a war of good against bad, and that we were the good guys and the Germans and Japanese were the bad guys. And of course we were right. Maturity, increased knowledge, and appreciation of the complexity, nuances, and ambiguity of geopolitics did nothing to challenge the accuracy of that kid’s judgment.

Not all wars are like that. Sometimes it is the Hapsburgs and Bourbons fighting over not principles but only who gets what power where. Sometimes there is an ethical distinction, but only between very bad and worse. But sometimes wars are a conflict between a right side and a wrong one, and in those cases people need to see it and take the side of those in the right.

A few decades ago it mainly was the Democrats in this country who had difficulty doing that. Many of them failed to see Soviet communism for what it was and the Cold War for what it was – fundamentally a conflict between freedom and tyranny, right and wrong. Too many of them preached a false notion of a moral equivalence between the sides, and some, such as Edward Kennedy, at least intermittently sided with the Russians. These days it mainly is Republicans who have that difficulty, and by coincidence with regard to a conflict involving Russia.

Under Vladimir Putin Russia became more authoritarian toward its own people and more aggressive toward other nations. Putin made it fairly clear that he would like to regain many or all of the lost territories of the old Soviet empire. His agents and police murdered his political opponents both in Russia and other countries and ran a low level cyber war against the United States and some of its allies. Then, earlier this year, his armed forces attacked Ukraine with a goal of overthrowing its government and seizing its territory – failing in their objectives while committing atrocities, massacres, and war crimes. The Ukrainians defended themselves strongly and effectively, and at present are winning or at least in stalemates on the ground. The Ukrainians had threatened no one and invaded no one. Ukraine’s independence was guaranteed by an international agreement signed by governments including Russia’s. In internal politics and foreign policy Ukrainians had been moving or trying to move toward the more liberal practices of countries to their west. One does not have to romanticize Ukraine as exemplar of liberalism and democracy to see who is right and who is wrong in this war.

Yet many Republicans and their supporters in the conservative media fail to see it, or worse are picking the wrong side. Some such as Tucker Carlson have sided with the Russians explicitly. Others have done so by implication. They are actively hostile to the Ukrainians and have little or nothing bad to say about Putin and the Russians. (Cathy Young has written a good article at The Bulwark covering some of the stupid, petty, and vulgar reactions to Zelensky’s visit to the United States and his speech at the Capitol.)

One should wonder why they do it. A simple answer would be that they like Putin and what they think he stands for. Trumpists, Catholic integralists, and national conservatives may see the supposed tough, traditional, Christian, nationalistic state Putin advertises as better than what they consider to be the weak, decadent, godless, liberal globalism of this country and most of Europe. Whatever the reason, it is a change for Republicans. The party of Eisenhower, Goldwater, Reagan, the Bushes, Dole, Romney, and McCain would not have been a comfortable place for people supporting anti-American dictators against those trying to resist them. I wish it were not one now, but it surely seems to be.

Still most Republicans do favor the Ukrainians in the war, but many of them question the amount, usefulness, and strategic benefit of the aid sent to Ukraine. That is normal and easily understandable political behavior, especially after the government’s fiasco in Afghanistan. However I think that, with some perhaps important but strategically irrelevant exceptions, they are wrong. I think our country is getting a bargain in Ukraine. America and its allies are going to have plenty to keep them busy for years with China. They do not need to have to deal with a rebuilt version of the Soviet empire threatening Europe at the same time. The Ukrainians have been brave and effective in the war. If with our aid they can stop this anschluss of Putin’s, it could save us from needing to return to Europe in much greater strength and perhaps having to stop his next one directly with our own forces in a NATO country. That would be expensive. 

A Missed Opportunity and a Failed Test

A couple of weeks ago Donald Trump gave Republican politicians and their allies in the conservative media a splendid opportunity to take a stand and do something right to at least partially make up for the cowardice, dishonesty, and lack of principle they had shown since he tried to overthrow the government after losing the election in 2020. He demanded that the Constitution be “terminated” to return him to office and did it explicitly and in writing. All they had to do was call a spade a spade, repudiate an enemy of the republic as an enemy of the republic, and declare that Trump was unfit to hold any public office and unwelcome in their party. The decision to do so should have been an easy one for people who took their oaths of office or fidelity to the Constitution seriously. Yet nothing much happened. The self-styled constitutional conservatives in politics and the media mainly looked the other way just as they had looked the other way or, worse, supported him since November of 2020. It is hard to find a doubt to give them the benefit of.

Many libertarians usually have favored the Republicans over the Democrats in the belief that overall they were friendlier to freedom and usually had policies and plans that were less bad than those of the Dems. It is time for them to reconsider. If today’s Republicans cannot find the nerve or perhaps even a reason to reject a would be Duce who wants to take power by direct and unconstitutional action, how serious is their commitment to freedom and the Constitution, and how are they enough less dangerous than the Democrats to justify supporting them in a general way?

Asking the Wrong Question

 Republicans like to complain about being treated unfairly by members of the traditional media. They often have good reasons for doing so, but, based on what I have seen in the news, today interviewers have been doing them a favor. Asking Republicans if they agree with Trump’s call to “terminate” the Constitution, allowed them to give the easy and probably honest answer that they do not. That is not the right question to be asking Republican politicians and their allies in the conservative media. The right question is “would you support a candidate for public office who called for overthrowing the Constitution of the United States, and if not does that include Donald Trump?” That is the question Republicans should have to answer and live with the consequences, one way or the other.

Having to Take a Stand

“A massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for

the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles,

even those found in the Constitution. Our great

“Founders” did not want, and would not condone

False & Fraudulent Elections!”

- Donald Trump, December 2, 2002

Sometimes ducking one’s responsibility  hoping a tough problem will go away or take care of itself works, and sometimes the problem gets worse to a point where it cannot be ducked and has to be faced. That is where Republican politicians and their allies in the conservative media are today with Donald Trump.

The man has just called openly and in writing for overthrowing the government and Constitution of the United States to place him in power. He made a similar demand before the election but without explicitly calling for abandoning the Constitution, which could have left Republicans with a shaky out of assuming the man was ignorant enough not to know that there were no legal or constitutional means to do what he wanted. This time he has left them no way out. They have to make a decision and announce it in public.

Republican politicians and people in the conservative media have either to reject Trump or by implication reject the American Constitution, laws, and way of life. At a minimum the Republican national committee should announce that Trump will receive no help or money from the party in the future, and Republicans in the house and senate should declare in public that they will oppose him as a candidate for any elected office at any time. The fully honorable thing would be for Republicans to join with the Democrats and impeach and convict him for attempting to overthrow the government in various ways from December 2020 to the present – serving the country by preventing him from running for any office. If they do nothing Republicans and their friends in the conservative media, including those among them who hold public office or served in the armed forces and swore an oath to the Constitution, will have shown that their professed fidelity to the Constitution and principles of the republic is not real enough to matter, and that having a professed enemy of the republic as a candidate is acceptable to them. They will have earned the contempt of Americans with whom that fidelity is real. (Those Republicans who are insufficiently motivated by honor or patriotism might want to consider pragmatic political reasons for rejecting Trump now. They need to be rid of him before the next election if they want to win it. If they get rid him now when they have good and explainable reasons, his supporters might understand and anyway will have two years to get over any disappointment.)

Whether Republicans do the right thing or not, Merrick Garland needs to. As a political matter it would benefits the Democrats for Trump to run for president in 2024. Garland needs to ignore that and prosecute Trump on charges that will stick.