It’s not hard to find people who insist Trump is authoritarian because of the things he says. But authoritarians are not defined by the things they say; they’re defined by the things they do. The judicial branch already struck down Trump’s executive order on refugees. Despite Trump’s hyperbolic denunciations of the media, America’s press remains as free and vibrant as ever. The first weeks of the new presidency have not been marked by a meek and obedient Congress but by one that can’t unify behind a single legislative agenda.
Civilities: Why Milo Yiannopoulos is a man to be feared. (It’s not why you think.)
No, the reason to pay attention to the 33-year-old Breitbart editor lies in his ability to provoke otherwise decent citizens to put profits and publicity before civil discourse, and in how his hateful speech incites many to clamp down on the free speech that is a fundamental right in this country. That’s what we most have to fear from him: that we’ll lose ourselves and our values in this mud-wrestling contest.
.. How is a thinking person to reconcile the shameless profiteering of a magazine that supposedly serves the LGBT community with the knee-jerk reaction to suppress this admittedly outrageous voice?
.. I’m reminded of what the great U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, which is that the remedy for hateful speech is not enforced silence, but more speech. As much as I deplore what Yiannopoulos says and the greed that gives him a platform, we should not silence his offensive words. We can only face them with our ongoing message of inclusion and respect, drowning out his message of hate.
Five Books to Change Conservatives’ Minds
As the 2016 presidential election made clear, we live in the era of the echo chamber. To escape their own, progressives need to be reading the best conservative thought — certainly Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, but also more contemporary figures such as Antonin Scalia and Robert Ellickson. The same is true for conservatives, if they hope to learn from progressives. Here are five books with which they might start.
.. Many conservatives insist that judges should adhere to the “original meaning” of the Constitution. Dworkin offers the most systematic response to this view. He emphasizes that the Constitution contains a lot of open-ended phrases, containing abstract moral language: “equal protection,” “freedom of speech,” “due process of law.”
.. He contends that whatever judges say, all of them end up as “moral readers” of such phrases — and so their own convictions must play a significant role. The question, then, is what kind of moral reading we will give, not whether we will give one.
.. After reading these books, conservatives are hardly likely to rush out and volunteer to work for the Democratic Party. But they will end up a lot more humble.
The U.S. Media Is Completely Unprepared to Cover a Trump Presidency
Donald Trump and his surrogates have shown an uncanny ability to lie in the face of objective facts. They will now have the power of the federal government to help them.
.. Judith Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter whose front-page storyabout the aluminum tubes bolstered the case for war in Iraq explained: “My job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Timeswhat the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.”
.. The first reason is that political journalism is highly dependent on official sources, which are chased with abandon. Miller’s defense of stenography seems absurd in hindsight, but there is a grain of truth in it. Government sources are granted a high degree of credibility, and official lies can be difficult to dispute. Contrary leaks from highly placed sources can offer an important check on the official story, but the breadth of the surveillance state built by Bush and Obama, a surveillance state now in Trump’s hands, will make such leaks difficult.
.. The total Republican control of government means that Democrats will struggle to get their objections to carry much weight, much as they did prior to the Iraq War.
.. During George W. Bush’s absurd war pageantry in May 2003, Matthews remarked that Bush looked like a “high-flying jet star,” and that Bush “won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” The Iraq War is arguably still ongoing.
The Matthews episode illustrates that in addition to reporting itself being manipulated, members of the media themselves engaged in careful brand-management exercises in order to portray themselves as in touch with “Real America,” granting themselves permission to dismiss criticisms of the Bush administration as the ravings of pampered liberal elites.
.. Adversarial coverage of the Bush administration notably increased once his approval ratings dipped so low that media figures felt as though they were reflecting public opinion when they criticized him.
.. With Trump, the United States has elected a president who has shown a complete disregard for free speech, arguing that his detractors do not have a “right” to criticize him. He believes the First Amendment’s protections for the press are too strong. He has a thirst for vengeance against those whom he perceives as having wronged him, and now he has the power of the federal government to pursue his vendettas.
.. The temptation to accept the Trump administration’s unreality—particularly given increased distrust of the media and his ability to insulate his base from the truth—will be tremendous. His ability to use the powers of the federal government to bolster his dishonesty will magnify his powers of deception a thousandfold.