This is not a prediction. It is my fervent hope.
It is now two days since Donald Trump was elected as the next president of the United States, and I am not as worried about it as many of my friends are. To be clear, I am not happy about it. I am not calm. I am very nervous. But many of my friends are people of colour, LGBTQ, immigrants, and women, and they are freaking the fuck out.
They are worried about the impending presidency of a man who, during his life and his presidential campaign, routinely insulted women, the disabled, military veterans, immigrants, and Muslims. A man who bragged about committing sexual assault. A man who enjoys substantial support from the Klan.
They are worried that Vice President-elect Pence is a man who believes that “Congress should oppose any effort to put gay and lesbian relationships on an equal legal status with heterosexual marriage” and “ensure that federal dollars [are] no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” and should direct federal funding to gay conversion therapy. Who voted to make it illegal to help a minor travel to another state to obtain an abortion. And wanted to make English the country’s official language.
And they are worried because in the last two days, people have begun to report incidents of sexist, racist, or religiously motivated violence apparently committed by those emboldened by Trump’s election.
On the other hand, I have seen an encouraging trend towards community and personal support in response to the election. On Tuesday night, my wife and I turned to each other and made a commitment to do more to improve our world. We talked about the ways we can contribute to our local communities, become involved in local politics or civic organisations, donate to charity, and reach out to our friends and family who feel most threatened by a Trump presidency and let them know they have our support. Many of my friends and family have mentioned having similar conversations.
These dual trends–fear and distrust of the executive branch and faith in our own ability to effect change on a personal and community level–point to what I hope will be a new movement in US culture and politics: The Militant, Small Government Left.
During the Bush presidency, anti-war protests drew hundreds of thousands of people angered by foreign wars waged without Congressional approval, warrantless surveillance, and the PATRIOT Act. As Reason reported last year, those protests shrunk, then died after President Obama was elected in 2008. Obama won the Nobel Peace Price less than a year into his presidency, not for his achievements (which barely exceeded the admirable but mainly symbolic task of being elected), but as “a (barely) implicit condemnation of Mr. Bush’s presidency.”
But Obama’s presidency was not a repudiation of Bush’s foreign policy; it was an extension and expansion of it. He continued the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as long as he was able, and withdrew US troops from Iraq only when he was unable to secure a new Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government. He continued to interpret the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Forces expansively to justify military activities in foreign countries far from Afghanistan (and Iraq). He expanded Bush’s drone war program and instituted a secret “kill list” over which he presided, without judicial or congressional oversight, and which resulted in the assassination of a US citizen and his sixteen year old son. Despite promising to have “the most transparent administration in history,” Obama instead had one of the most secretive, withholding a great deal of information about the administration’s war efforts, aggressively prosecuting whistle-blowers, and maintaining a generally hostile attitude towards the press. His administration leaked sensitive material to the filmmakers responsible for Zero Dark Thirty, apparently to ensure that the film portrayed the administration in a favourable light, which is essentially an act of covert domestic propaganda.
In short, there’s been a lot for principled, anti-war leftists to protest, and yet the left has been largely silent on these issues. Partisanship almost certainly is to blame. It is much harder to protest a president for his foreign policies when he is fighting for the type of domestic policies you like against a barrage of right-wing criticism. But the Trump presidency will revitalise the left’s main objection to foreign wars: They’re a thing that Republicans do. That is not a principled or admirable basis on which to be opposed to foreign wars, but it is possible that strong opposition to any forthcoming Trump wars will return the left to supporting structural protections against executive overreach: congressional approval for war, due process for the execution of US citizens and for domestic surveillance, media transparency, and so on. These are structural protections that the left ceased to worry about when Obama held office, but may start to care much more about when Trump holds the loose reins of executive authority.
I am told that checks and balances are a thing that schoolchildren in the US grow up learning about. I did not grow up here, so I started to teach myself about them at about the same time that the left was forgetting what they learned in school and coming to the realisation that constitutional checks and balances were an archaic impediment to the federal government’s ability to impose necessary social progress.
When Congress “refused to act,” Obama did so by executive fiat and won praise for his bold action from the left. This despite previously criticising Bush for doing the same:
But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress.
Now, the left is staring down the double barrel of a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president who not only appears ignorant of constitutional limits on government, but also entirely uninterested in them. They may want to reassess their objections to constitutional limits on majoritarian power.
For years, Obama and the left justified expansions of federal authority on the basis of popular support. During his presidency, Obama “sought to reshape the nation with a sweeping assertion of executive authority and a canon of regulations that have inserted the United States government more deeply into American life.” Salon declared that Obama’s 2012 re-election represented “a victory for the Democratic ideal of activist government and a mandate for more of it.” Obama repeatedly has justified his proposals for executive action on the basis that he and his supporters are on the “right side of history.” During Obama’s presidency, the left continued to advance its expansive theory of the social contract: While the left was in power, its goals were just and unassailable and we all had consented to them through elections. The authority for executive power was majority support, and the check against abuse of that power was the certainty that Obama was a pretty good guy.
Well.
How do those arguments sound now? If an election confers legitimacy beyond the limited powers set forth in the Constitution, if government is the name we give to the things we do together, are we prepared to accept that Trump’s proposed wall, or ban on Muslim immigration, or Mike Pence’s vision for ending the homosexual scourge is “too important” to wait for Congressional approval? Or that the authority for these acts need not be found in the government’s limited powers, but grows from changing needs in changing times?
The left can find strong, well-developed counter-arguments to these positions that have been developed for years by small-government conservatives. Each time Trump proposes a new limit on immigration, or voting rights, or the press, or speech, the left should ask where in the Constitution he finds the authority to do so unilaterally. Each time the Republican Congress begins to push a bill restricting access to medical care, or funding conservative causes, the left should cite the work that small-government conservatives like Eugene Volokh and Richard Epstein have been doing for years, and ask whether they find federal authority to act when states or individuals might be better prepared to do so.
Doing so will require some abrupt and uncomfortable course correction after decades of pushing for essentially unlimited federal power. But it also will be the surest long-term protection against Trump, and those like him, from stepping into office and wielding that power to enact policies to which the left objects.
Strict constitutional limits on federal authority, however, don’t leave a whole lot of room for achieving progressive policy goals at the federal level. Because of the left’s proclivity to Big Solutions to Big Problems, small-government liberalism may seem like an oxymoron. That’s not the case.
As I said earlier, the most encouraging reaction to Trump’s election has been people’s recommitment to social progress outside of the White House. This is the path forward. Consolidating power in the federal government results in progressive achievements only for so long as progressives are in charge. It also concentrates the benefits of government among a smaller and more powerful group of politicians, simplifying the levers of power for moneyed interests who wish to pull them. The result is a vast and mysterious federal government that, when the left has its way, increases the minimum wage or regulatory oversight of Wall Street and, when the right has its way, increases barriers to abortion or imposes additional immigration restriction. However, no matter which side is in charge, the federal government always subsidises corporate agriculture and military manufacturing, wages a war on drugs that disproportionately affects people of colour, and engages in foreign wars that kill untold numbers of poor foreigners. The more complex government is, and the more we ask it to do, the easier it is to hide these sort of policies behind a screen of hot button items du jour.
There are a host of local and state offices which used to exercise substantially more power and on which Republicans have been largely focused for decades. Returning power to and focusing campaign efforts on local elections could deprive the federal government of the power to enact harmful policies. Rather than asking what the federal government can do to improve the world (which is, at the best of times, precious little and that at a great price), ask what it is doing to make it worse:
We are unlikely to see strong DOJ oversight of racist policing under a President Trump. But racist policing is exacerbated by the racist War on Drugs, which has led to the militarisation of local police forces, increases violent interaction between the police and the community, and disproportionately affects people of colour. There is a growing movement towards marijuana legalisation at the state level nationwide. If the federal government has no right to interfere with a woman’s medical care, question whether it has a right to any individual’s decision to use drugs.
Ethanol and other farm subsidies fail to satisfy principles on either side of the political aisle. They are economically inefficient and interfere in the free market, which should turn conservatives off them. They are environmentally harmful and result in lower prices for corn-rich foods, which increases childhood obesity. Rather than advocating for increased federal funds for healthy foods, or federal mandates for school lunches or exercise programs, question whether the federal government has a role in propping up corporate agriculture in politically powerful midwest states.
Across the board, recognise that federal power is a double-edged sword. The bigger and sharper it becomes, the worse it cuts when a tyrant like Trump wields it. Reduce that power, reserve it for the people, and a tyrant is nothing but a small man with nasty habits and political impotence.
More power in the hands of the people means greater responsibilities to do things like take care of our communities. But it also means more responsibilities for our own well-being, especially when that well-being is threatened by what many see as a previously hidden undercurrent of racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic bigotry.
For many years, the left has scoffed at the gun-owning right as bitter clingers and derided their fear of government tyranny. I suspect that some on the left are reconsidering now, and all should.
A friend of mine, who is Native American, told me yesterday that she’s considering buying a handgun for personal protection. She grew up in a rural area and is no stranger to guns, but hasn’t generally considered owning one necessary for self-defence. If she does, she would be part of a small but important group of minorities who recognise the value of self-defence.
In the post-bellum South, African Americans armed themselves to defend their families and communities against racist violence. The Black Panthers armed themselves to defend against violent over-policing in black neighbourhoods and Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, signed a gun-control bill passed specifically to limit their rights to do so. The American Indian Movement has a history of armed resistance against federal authorities in defence of native land rights.
Today, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, founded in Dallas, advocates for armed patrols in black neighbourhoods to curb police violence. The Pink Pistols are “dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community.” And there are numerous gun handling and gun safety classes designed for women to enable them to protect themselves against misogynistic violence.
Many on the left have been critical of the differential treatment of the Bundys, who engaged in two armed stand-offs with federal authorities over their right to graze their cattle on public land, and the recent treatment of unarmed protesters gathered against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is being built next to a Standing Rock Sioux reservation and on land which the Standing Rock Sioux claim as their own under a federal treaty. And while it may be tempting to complain about systemic racism, those complaints were ineffective during the Obama administration and will achieve even less during a Trump presidency. Instead, those on the left should acknowledge the fact that the Bill of Rights exists to protect individuals against tyrannical government, and vigorously exercise their right to arm themselves. Whether they use those arms to defend themselves against bigoted violence in their homes, churches, or on the streets, or whether they display those arms as a powerful symbol of community power, they will be embracing a history of armed activism.
As I said at the outset, none of this is a prediction, but it is my fervent hope. I support the women’s rights to control their bodies, and the rights of LGBTQ people to love and marry whom they wish and to define the terms of their own identity. I support the right of all people to work for a living and to move across national boundaries to do so. I deplore racism. Although the modern left supports these same rights, it does so as the current manifestation of a political philosophy that holds a powerful government is the best positioned to effect social change. The presidency of Donald Trump is the rot in that philosophical framework. He is the other side of the sword. Having spent generations expanding government power, extending its reach into every facet of our lives, of justifying coercive government on the basis of majority support, the left now watches with horror as the country hands that power to a prejudiced, unprincipled tyrant.
We can try to wait out the next four years, hoping that social liberalism can again achieve political power, and try to undo whatever havoc Trump wreaks in that time. That strategy runs the risk that Trump holds power. Or that another authoritarian tyrant is elected. And it makes social progress forever only an election away from reversal. Lasting, structural limits on governmental power of the sort set forth in the Constitution are the strongest guarantee to executive overreach and the only sure insurance that the next Donald Trump will be an annoyance, not a catastrophe.
Stop voting for change. Get in the streets and make some.
Postscript on privilege: I am white and I recognise that I may feel more emboldened to advocate for people of colour or sexual minorities to arm themselves precisely because I am white and less likely to suffer the consequences. I do not think that is a substantially more offensive exercise of privilege than asserting that these people should forego a constitutional and effective means of protecting themselves and advancing their rights because I am lucky enough to live in a liberal enclave with little crime and short police response times.