In governance, there are two basic questions: What and How. Our current political polarization is between the MAGA/Project 2025 ideologues who are focused on the “what,” and those of us who are intent upon protecting a Constitutional order prescribing “how.”
If there is one clear distinction between western constitutional systems, including ours, and the various dictatorships and theocracies around the globe, it is the formers’ emphasis on process. Indeed, we might justifiably characterize our Bill of Rights as a restatement of your mother’s admonition that how you do something is just as important as what you choose to do. Sometimes, more so.
The ends do not justify the means is an absolutely fundamental American precept.
This emphasis on process–the means– is widely acknowledged by political scientists. Whatever their other debates, there is a shared recognition that the American approach to legitimate governance is procedural. We are a nation of laws that are meant to govern how we go about ordering our common lives.
Some twenty-plus years ago, Rick Perlstein made a point about the political parties that has only gotten more apt.
We Americans love to cite the “political spectrum” as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry. But left and right today are not opposites. They are different species. It has to do with core principles. To put it abstractly, the right always has in mind a prescriptive vision of its ideal future world—a normative vision. Unlike the left (at least since Karl Marx neglected to include an actual description of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” within the 2,500 pages of Das Kapital), conservatives have always known what the world would look like after their revolution: hearth, home, church, a businessman’s republic. The dominant strain of the American left, on the other hand, certainly since the decline of the socialist left, fetishizes fairness, openness, and diversity. (Liberals have no problem with home, hearth, and church in themselves; they just see them as one viable life-style option among many.) If the stakes for liberals are fair procedures, the stakes for conservatives are last things: either humanity trends toward Grace, or it hurtles toward Armageddon…
For liberals, generally speaking, honoring procedures—the means—is at the very core of being “principled,” of acting with legitimacy. For conservatives, fighting for the desired outcomes—the ends—and, if necessary, at the expense of procedural niceties, is the definition of “principled.”
In a constitutional democracy, the franchise is first among the means. Democrats generally understand our system to be one in which citizens demonstrate their preference for “ends”–for policies–at the ballot box; accordingly, they believe that the more extensive the turnout, the more legitimate the ensuing legislative mandate.
Republicans–focused on ends–disagree. As the late New Right founding father Paul Weyrich once put it, “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Over the years, that difference between ends and means has become institutionalized within the two political parties. In states with Republican Attorneys general or Secretaries of State, like Indiana, those officials work to squeeze as many minority voters from the rolls as possible. Republican state legislatures gerrymander to the greatest extent possible, disenfranchising thousands of urban and liberal voters. (And yes, Democrats gerrymander too, but demonstrably much less.)
These moves strike Americans who were raised with the admonition that “it isn’t whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” as “dirty pool.” But they make all kinds of sense to people who believe they are trying to save civilization from hurtling toward an Armageddon where “those people” will replace the good White Christian men that God wants in charge.
Those True Believers represent a very significant element of the MAGA base. They don’t necessarily include the party overlords, but those pooh-bas recognize that their hold on power depends upon playing to the base’s beliefs. Today’s Republican officeholders agree with Machiavelli, who said “We ought to see clearly that the end does justify the means…If the method I am using to accomplishes the goal I am aiming at, it is for that reason a good method.”
The Trump administration–with its attacks on due process, habeas corpus and the rule of law itself– is making the difference impossible to ignore.
If the only way to win in a free and fair election is to reduce the number of eligible voters, maybe the problem is with your message.
In the words of the odious hypocrite Lindsey Graham, “If we let everyone vote we’ll never win another election”. Kinda says it all, don’t ya think?
The question, as always, is “what are we going to do about it?”
This is one of the most pertinent and profoundly insightful columns you have written in the 3 years I’ve been reading you, Sheila. You are always good, but this one is core material.
The question is what to do about it: How do the two sides live together on the same planet, in the same neighborhoods? At the same dinner table? How to achieve a liberal consensus on the “how” process of governance without threatening the conservative panic on the “what” that allows them to not feel threatened existentially??
What do we do about it? That’s the question. How do we get through to that one third of our citizens that don’t vote? Who are they and why don’t they go to the polls? What will it take to get them to vote? Answer these questions and you will likely find a pathway to victory, maybe even a landslide.
Yesterday was a great day to watch hearings, if you like obfuscation. Secretary Noem, in the midst of her babbling, admitted that they wouldn’t be returning Garcia Abrego. It appears the Supreme Court isn’t Supreme anymore.
What the lame media won’t tell folks, Peggy, is that Bukele is corrupted up to his eyeballs. He made a deal with MS13 gang members to help him win the election, which is why he wants all the members sent back to El Salvador without hearings, where their testimony will go on record. Since the US oligarchy uses Bukele in El Salvador, they can’t have him losing elections and allowing some “left-wing” politician to lead the country and put their resources back into the hands of the people.
If you look closely at the international leaders visiting Trump, they are almost all right-wing authoritarian leaders. Our oligarchy uses these people to help them plunder their country’s resources. Look at the deal Trump just got from Zelenskyy! 😉
Even Starmer from the UK is a right-winger, even though he’s in the Labor Party. It’s all a big con game. Who is winning in Europe right now? The defense industry. Guess who will be seeing giant cuts in their social programming? Europeans.
Trump and the Republicans are being used in the US to cut social programs (play the bad guys). Meanwhile, what is the Democratic Party doing? Closing ranks by their senior leaders, who are attacking the young progressive leaders. That makes sense if you’re trying to attract young voters. Not!
The door is wide open for the Democratic Party and the unions to lead the working class on an attack against the billionaire oligarchy, but they are refusing to walk through it. Why? 😉
As Paulo Freire would say, “Be careful because some leaders will pretend to lead the oppressed, but they really side with the oppressors.” That would be your Democratic Party and the media in this country.
Until that is fixed, there is nothing we can do as the proles to fight our oppressors.
In designing manufacturing processes, we distinguished between process and product control. Traditional quality control was product control based on statistically based sampling and measurement.
The old method is to inspect by measuring sampled product output to spot trends before they exceed product limits. The process can then be adjusted or maintained to rein in progressive failure.
A contemporary view focuses on process control. Instead of measuring after-the-fact product output, measure and maintain the process directly.
Of course, this can be applied to all work, machine, or system processes.
That is also the spirit of a law-abiding government. Laws are the means to a well-organized society: the end is our behavior.
The spirit of our present administration is tight control over us, and the end is wealth and power redistribution upstream.
Workers have the right to a larger portion of the wealth created by their work and to live as autonomously as possible. Investors now have most of the control, chasing an ever bigger share of the pie.
It’s unsurprising when a common NYC grifter is at the helm.
Duh!
Hasn’t this been cut, sliced, and diced, repeatedly on this thread? This is not a democracy, it never was! This government was designed by those who were not Democratic. Why would they want a democracy? When all of those individuals who were enslaved or who were the mongrels that were going to immigrate, or even the natives in this country, might have the possibility to vote? They never thought about sharing this country with anyone but white male Protestant land and slave owners! They were what was referred to in the Constitution, they were the ones with the rights, no one else. Additions to the Constitution, amendments, never changed anyone’s mind, but it did lull everyone else to sleep. A civil war was fought, did it change anything really? Did it change minds? There were plenty in the northern states that totally agreed with the South! And, there are still plenty in the so-called liberal North that agrees with the conservative South. So how does that get rectified after 500 years or so? This country started with butchery, cruelty, slavery, thievery,
the same as in South America with the Spanish, and it continues with the same!
THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENCY IN AMERICAN HISTORY
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/05/the-david-frum-show-the-most-corrupt-presidency-in-american-history/682720/
TO ALL THE NAYSAYERS OF ALL THINGS ‘USA’:
The United States has not lived up to its promise . . . but it HAS made the promise, and strives to grow into The Constitution . . . testimony to this fact of the USA striving for its promise is: International folks leaving their own country of origin and dragging themselves, their children, their aged parents through untold terrors and hardship to come here. Word of mouth is The Best Advertisement – and we enjoyed generations of that very ad!
Naysayers: Get On Board! Join us in the effort to build! Quit your bellyaching and put that destructive effort into fulfilling the promise.
And now, as we face the worst we ever have – Internal Attacks – we need YOUR positivity as never before . . . join this patriotic effort to continue to become what we have promised!
To ride roughshod over US established laws by the current trump régime is no less criminal because they were elected. Disregard for Bill of Rights because they believe their way is the right way for everyone is narrow, disrespectful and deceitful. Instigating chaos as a smokescreen, distraction from all their grift is showing their blatant disregard for the American people and the world.
Jim,
And exactly what do you expect to happen? Put to work how? The corruption is so entrenched in this country, it controls everything. Pick up some rifles? Maltov cocktails? IEDs? You seen the results of that all over the world in the past 40 years, is that worth it? Standing in a store when someone detonates? We already have tons of weapons and ammunition floating around the population. We already have drive-bys, we already have shoot them ups, he already have murder as a sport, it’s going to take more than someone to get moving. Get moving and do what? Join who for what? This country will self-destruct in the near future. There was no shining city on a hill, or whatever in the heck Reagan said, there never was! Every social program that got passed by Congress has been demolished. You won’t be able to send your kid to any worthwhile school paid for with taxpayer money. The wealthy will have sucked the juice out of all of that. And eventually, it’ll be back to the old British slums with the wealthy doing as they please. The wealthy are already building their own cities in the United States, so are we going to stop that? Please, this is not going to be fixed by some national movement. They would just as soon gun everyone down who complain, than not! We talked about this very thing in other blogs 25 years ago. The things were going in this very direction! And everyone laughed. There was no way these things could happen. They even poopood the supreme Court! Now you’ve got lunatics in charge of all three branches. And everyone was taking a nice nap. So, don’t jump on the bandwagon 25 years too late Jim!
What Rose said!
Trump’s oath to defend the constitution, was as much an act of deceit as Fox News’ disclaimer that they were “Fair and Balanced.”
It occurs to me that we could steal the old favorite slogan of the right and insist “We stand for Law and Order”. Wonder what they would make of that?
The problem with law and order as a motto is that it can be used by dictators to enforce THEIR laws. Better to stand for the Constitution. Even better to stand for the American Idea as described by Sheila.
Jim Landes. I’m with you all the way. The nay sayers are carrying water for the bad guys. Why oppose them if there is no hope of anything better?
Hey Sharon,
Exactly what were you doing these past decades when the back room deals were being made, and it really wasn’t in secret! Some of us saw it way back then, some of us wrote about it, some of us roiled against it, and you know what we received back? That it was ridiculous! That the right was going to be non-existent as a political party! Now if you can’t remember that, you shouldn’t be making comments at all.
Thank you for the reply, John,
And for your recognition. I regret that you are so hopeless. I am not.
I believe in The Constitution and hope.
IF YOU TRY you might find that you get what you need – please, keep trying, John
Thank you again, Sir.
ONLY 3.5% OF A POPULATION
NEEDS TO ENGAGE IN ACTIVE
DISSENT TO TOPPLE A DICTATOR
~ Erica Chenowith
Al, I agree with your assessment of this column.
The fundamental problem is that there isn’t an answer to your question. The worldview of their side is based on unfairness. It’s a non-negotiable requirement. They can never see their view as one among many possibilities. As long as they cling to their worldview, they are unreachable.
The only solution I see as viable is building more and more of the people who think generally as we do, in the fairness of equitable process, and reducing the number stuck in their fairy-tale past. This needs to be focused largely on the young, and so education is critical. It’s a process that has been underway and gaining slow ground for many decades already. The Obama election triggered a backlash, and that has led to the current period. We now need our own backlash to get things started back in the right direction. Perhaps the horror show that is the current administration can be the necessary kickstarter?
I hope so, because your country is in real peril. And that endangers us all.
Another way, the Venn diagram of the left and the right is two orbs staring cross-eyed at each other in bafflement and disgust.