MWI Weekly 10.14.2022

"Rocket Lab’s Electron-launched private mission to Venus will deploy a small probe from a high-energy Photon" by Authors of the study: Richard French, Christophe Mandy, Richard Hunter, Ehson Mosleh, Doug Sinclair, Peter Beck, Sara Seager, Janusz J. Petkowski, Christopher E. Carr, David H. Grinspoon, Darrel Baumgardner, and on behalf of the Rocket Lab Venus Team is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

This week: Donald Trump’s very bad week, trouble ahead, a popular intellectual goes under the microscope. And Venus.

Perhaps few prominent people in the country had a worse week than Donald Trump. Not only was the former president the subject of a scathing presentation [link to video] in what could be the final hearing of the Jan. 6 Committee, but the final public act of the committee -- for now -- was a unanimous vote to subpoena Trump's testimony and any relevant documents he may have in his possession.

There's no way to know whether the former president will comply with the subpoena. And there is likewise no way to know whether the Department of Justice would answer any criminal referral by Congress to charge him for not complying, as they did in the case of Steve Bannon.

But given the sheer volume of potential crimes Trump may have committed, it might not matter. At least one prominent journalist, Franklin Foer, who has been a close observer of the situation as well as of Attorney General Merrick Garland himself, believes an indictment is undoubtedly coming: The Inevitable Indictment of Donald Trump - The Atlantic

It's hard to argue with Foer's analysis. As regrettable as it would be -- and leaving aside the obvious question of the chaos sure to follow -- there may be no other choice. To allow any government official, let alone the one to whom we grant the ultimate executive authority, to run roughshod over the law is intolerable within our system.

But the nature of Trump's most serious alleged crimes makes it the most deeply grievous matter our Republic has faced since the Civil War. If the story is true (and the evidence presented by the Jan. 6 committee is mountainous), we are faced with the prospect of a seditious conspiracy not only encouraged by a president desperate to stay in office, but actively mounted by him.

There are many questions to be answered, not the least of which is why. The inside of Donald Trump's head is probably a place where no sane person would want to rummage around, but the question of motive must be answered eventually, somehow. It may only be possible within the context of a criminal trial.

Another point to consider: In our rights-based system, the interests of criminal defendants are (or at least are supposed to be) carefully guarded not only by the courts, but by the prosecutors as well. The processes and procedures of our criminal law are designed to produce a just verdict, and the conviction of any defendant must be agreed unanimously by a jury convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of their guilt.

Trump sympathizers no doubt would refuse to accept any verdict except acquittal, but for the rest of us it's imperative to be reassured our system can function properly under the most extreme stress and most profound public pressure, even to the point of threats of violence, and the rights of the accused vindicated. After all, our own liberty, individual and collective, depends on our faith in the Constitution and the rule of law. Without their protection the resolution of disputes, political and otherwise, becomes a matter of force.

It's the difference between a civilized existence as human beings and the life of the brute under the law of the jungle.

But the law itself is a human creation, wholly dependent on us to craft, refine and obey. And that's where another article in the Atlantic becomes relevant. Here, former judge J. Michael Luttig -- widely respected as one of the premier conservative jurists of our time -- addresses a question which John Eastman (himself a central figure in the alleged Jan. 6 plot) has advanced as a way of circumventing the popular vote: There Is Not an ‘Independent State Legislature’ - The Atlantic

To be clear, Whigs fully embrace the argument our country is a republic, not a democracy. We don't put all questions to a popular vote in the Athenian way. Instead, we have a system where we elect people to make the decisions for us, under a grant of authority by us, for a fixed term in office during which their authority can be exercised. In other words, we have replaced power -- the power of the mob, the power of the autocrat -- with office. And the range of action available to whoever occupies an office is constrained by our rights, as guaranteed by the Constitution, as well as the rules we have developed over time to avoid the abuse of power.

All of which amount to what we mean by the rule of law. And all of which depends, first and foremost, on free, fair and secure elections. We choose ourselves, from ourselves, those who would represent us. They in turn choose and approve those who would decide what the law is. Which makes the challenge of Trump and his minions a direct threat to the very foundations of our way of life.

Given all that, and as painful as it is to say, it's hard to see how anything but a criminal trial of the former president for his part in the alleged 2020 election conspiracy can possibly serve our ultimate interest. Fortunately, from what we have seen of late, the attorney general and the Department of Justice do indeed have the courage and determination to see the matter through. For the sake of all of us, we can only hope that proves to be the case.

The Reason Why

Of course, we don't live in a world devoid of history and experience. We have lessons from the past to draw upon. For many, those lessons lead to an analogy between the phenomenon of Trumpism and Mussolini's fascist movement in Italy.

It's not an unreasonable analogy to draw, for a lot of reasons. But as our own Hank Thayer pointed out on our Members Blog, fascism has a definite program, and while Trumpism bears a resemblance to it, they're not the same. We shouldn't be misled by the cosmetic similarities. Something deeper as at hand.

A better place to look may be the work of Carl Schmitt and his intellectual role in the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Naziism. While he himself saw Mussolini's success as the dawning of a new age, Schmitt was after something more: The dissolution of the Enlightenment and the classically liberal political philosophy which grew out of it, and which serves as the beating heart of our own constitutional order.

In a long piece in Liberties Journal, historian Richard Wolin examines Schmitt's thought and its relevance in the present day. (You can read the full piece here.) Not only are the echoes with our current situation unmistakable, but Wolin identifies the very essence of what the Steve Bannons of the world are really up to:

When it came to fathoming the mysteries of human existence, Schmitt insisted that the cognitive value of symbols and myths was far superior to the meager results of conceptual knowledge. This deep mistrust of reason was related to his veneration of “political theology,” which Schmitt introduced into the mainstream of modern political thought. Schmitt’s devaluation of secular knowledge was exemplified by his well-known dictum that “all modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts,” an assertion that reflected his disdain for the legacy of Enlightenment rationalism. That disdain is what has given Schmitt’s thought new life in our own bleak and inflamed times.

Anyone who has been paying attention can see the deep strains of anti-intellectualism, even nihilism, entwined in the project of what has evolved into the New Right today. Beneath the veneer of morality, traditionalism and faith lies something far more sinister: An effort to use those cultural markers to create an environment where reason itself is discarded in favor of sentiment.

And if you've been wondering how we got to the point where so much seems turned on its head, or even upside down, to mean the opposite of what it should mean, Schmitt is likely the answer.

What makes it so challenging is the simple fact you can't reason with unreason. There's no way to debate someone who is uninterested in facts, or impervious to evidence, or who is arguing in bad faith simply to win the argument. No progress is possible when the only goal on one side is to "own" the opposition. (Anyone with first-hand experience of being personally abused by a Trumpster knows all about it.)

The only thing to do is preserve and protect the institutions our Founders created to keep these dark forces at bay to begin with. And that means vote.

Odds and Ends

A while back, Jordan Peterson got properly torched (and rightfully so) for some comments about the War in Ukraine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course. But what was striking, then and now, is how blithely so many accepted Peterson's views as based on expertise.

It's a trend which has possibly become more pronounced in the age of mass communications: The universal expert. Often, they're the authors of the kind of breezy, sweeping tomes which seem to connect so many dots with ease and comfort.

That easy expertise should be reason for caution. Not even Einstein, after all, was able to come up with a Theory of Everything, and he was working strictly in the field of physics.

Anyway, another operator in the same machinery is Yuval Noah Harari, who has reached enviable levels of prominence and prosperity through his writing. But what seems to have not reached a very high level is scrutiny; at least until now, not many people have bothered to see whether he's actually right.

Enter a neuroscientist with a doctorate from Princeton by the name of Darshana Narayanan. This is worth the time to read in full:

The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari ❧ Current Affairs

If there's an antidote to anti-intellectualism, and its close cousin faux intellectualism, Dr. Narayanan may have the prescription.

Meanwhile, on a much brighter note, three well-deserving Americans were named this year's recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics. And one of them happened to be the right guy in the right place at the right time:

An Econ Nobel for research that saved the world (substack.com)

In some "best laid plans of mice and men" news, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida may have stepped in it a bit when he sent a planeload of migrants to Martha' Vineyard recently:

Texas sheriff puts Martha’s Vineyard migrants on path to apply for special visa by declaring them crime victims (nbcnews.com)

Oops.

We're pretty hard on the populists, but by no means do we ignore when they're right. Neither, for that matter, does Robert Tracinski:

Do the Populists Have a Point? - Discourse (discoursemagazine.com)

And finally, Rocket Lab is ready to prove there may be more than one way to go about exploring space. It's a pretty nifty, and cost-effective, approach:

Rocket Lab’s private Venus mission | The Planetary Society

Just as an aside, a few theorists have wondered if we may be looking too much at Mars and not enough at Venus. We could never land on the surface of the latter, of course. But it may be possible to engineer orbiting habitats there. Something worth keeping in mind.

And with that, I wish you a safe and fun weekend. As always, it's a pleasure to be at your service. See you next week.

Kevin J. Rogers is the executive director of the Modern Whig Institute. He can be reached at director@modernwhig.org. ___________________________________________________________

The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.