The Middle Finger Of The South

Ah, Indiana! Long understood by sentient Hoosiers as the middle finger of the south, a state trying valiantly to replace Mississippi at the bottom of the civic barrel.

I thought about Indiana’s retrograde governance when I came across an article from The Bulwark, arguing that while Trumpism is clearly incompatible with liberal democracy, it is quite compatible with the governance of  states that have never quite emerged from the Confederacy.

Liberal democracy has never put down deep roots in the South in the way it did across the rest of the country. The region never really abandoned its warped electoral politics and inclination to single-party cronyism, a Southern political instinct that helps explain how Democratic dominance transformed so completely into Republican one-party rule following the civil rights era. Inequality continues to define economic life in the region. Southern states have remained hostile to many minority groups, particularly LGBTQ Americans, and they are wildly out of step with most other states on reproductive rights. And incarceration in the South remains both less humane and more common than in other regions.

Trumpism is intent upon “southernizing” America. (Okay, I know that isn’t really a word…) The article quoted our creepy vice-president, JD Vance, who during the campaign opined that “American history is a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons” and went on to conclude that “whichever side the hillbillies are on, wins.” He added that he applies that image to America’s current politics , because–in his (Yale-educated) hillbilly view– ” the Northern Yankees are now the hyperwoke, coastal elites.”

The Bourbons, in this understanding, were the Southern planters and professionals who opposed Reconstruction. They fomented discord among poor whites to ensure that they would focus their political energies on their peers rather than those who were their de facto rulers. That elite applauded when, In 1896, the Supreme Court approved segregation with the principle of “separate but equal.”

In 1898, America’s first coup d’etat took place as the Democrats of Wilmington, North Carolina issued a “White Declaration of Independence.” They were attacking the coalition of black Republicans and white Populists that had control of the local government in the 1890s, which the old Confederates of the city found intolerable. With their resentment and rage being fueled by white Democratic powerbrokers, two thousand armed men forced out the duly elected government. None were more pleased by this result than their Bourbon backers.

The article reports that this “banker-planter-lawyer” class is largely responsible for the South’s political and economic underdevelopment–that it was “ostensibly pro-business but viciously self-interested” and that as a consequence, the South as a region still lags economically—pinned down by poverty and hobbled by the absence of public investments. The states have few worker protections, and its working classes have difficulty earning a living wage, making It “virtually impossible” to exist on the income of a single, low-wage, 40-hour-a-week job, especially in the absence of social welfare/healthcare.

That paragraph could have been written about Indiana.

From “Right to Work” (for less) legislation, to one of the nation’s most regressive tax systems, to the legislature’s constant knee-bending to landlords who prey on the poor, to vicious cuts in Medicaid, to restrictions on abortion that are sending medical practitioners out of the state, to the theft of tax dollars from public schools in order to subsidize wealthy Hoosiers and religious schools…the list goes on.

Some years ago, I wrote about ALICE, an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed; it applies to households with income above the federal poverty level, but below the actual, basic cost of living. United Way of Indiana found that more than one in three Hoosier households was unable to afford the basics of housing, food, health care and transportation, despite working hard, that 37% of households lived below the Alice threshold, (14% below the poverty level and another 23% above poverty but below the cost of living), that these were families and individuals with jobs, so most didn’t qualify for social services in Indiana, and that the jobs they fill are critically important–these are child care workers, laborers, movers, home health aides, heavy truck drivers, store clerks, repair workers and office assistants—and they are unsure if they’ll be able to put dinner on the table each night.

And just like those southern Bourbons, our elected overlords couldn’t care less. They focus instead upon deflecting responsibility by turning struggling Hoosiers against each other–hence the legislative attacks on trans children and DEI and moronic pronouncements that Black folks benefitted from the 3/5ths compromise. 

The theory is, if we’re provided with scapegoats, perhaps we won’t notice the Bourbon corruption, or the lack of public investment in social and physical infrastructure…

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Telling It Like It Is

Jay Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois recently made a speech in New Hampshire that has received significant–and merited–attention. Pritzker really “told it like it is.”

Heather Cox Richardson recently quoted from Pritzker’s speech at length, and today, I am going to do the same, because Pritzker’s words deserve widespread distribution.

“It’s wrong to snatch a person off the street and ship them to a foreign gulag with no chance to defend themselves in a court of law.” This is not about immigration, he said, but about the Constitution. “Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN SLOGAN IN HISTORY,” he said. “Today, it’s an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow, it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Trump.”

Pritzker called for “real, sensible immigration reform.”

“Immigration—with all its struggles and its complexities—is part of the secret sauce that makes America great, always. Immigrants strengthen our communities, enrich our neighborhoods, renew our passion for America’s greatness, enliven our music and our culture, enhance understanding of the world. The success of our economy depends upon immigrants. In fact, forty-six percent…of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.”

Trump’s attacks on immigrants, he said, are likely to make the U.S. economy fail. Indeed, he suggested, making America fail is the point of the Trump administration’s actions.

“We have a Secretary of Education who hates teachers and schools. We have a Secretary of Transportation who hates public transit. We have an Attorney General who hates the Constitution. We have a Secretary of State, the son of naturalized citizens—a family of refugees—on a crusade to expel our country of both.

“We have a head of the Department of Government Efficiency— an immigrant granted the privilege of living and working here, a man who has made hundreds of billions of dollars after the government rescued his business for him—who is looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself. And we have a President who claims to love America but who hates our military so much that he calls them ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’ and who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen US soldiers. And we have a Grand Old Party, founded by one of our nation’s bravest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln—who today would be a Democrat, I might add—… so afraid of the felon and the fraud that they put in the White House that they would sooner watch him destroy our country than lift a hand to save it.”

 “It’s time to stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat. It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy in wearing a big gold cross while announcing the defunding of children’s cancer research. And time to stop thinking we can reason or negotiate with a madman. Time to stop apologizing when we were NOT wrong. Time to stop surrendering, when we need to fight.

“Our small businesses don’t deserve to be bankrupted by unsustainable tariffs. Our retirees don’t deserve to be left destitute by a Social Security Administration decimated by Elon Musk. Our citizens don’t deserve to lose healthcare coverage because Republicans want to hand a tax cut to billionaires. Our federal workers don’t deserve to have, well, a 19-year-old DOGE bro called Big Balls destroy their careers.

“Autistic kids and adults who are loving contributors to our society don’t deserve to be stigmatized by a weird nepo baby who once stashed a dead bear in the backseat of his car.

“Our military servicemembers don’t deserve to be told by a washed up Fox TV commentator, who drank too much and committed sexual assault before being appointed Secretary of Defense, that they can’t serve this country simply because they’re Black or gay or a woman.

“And If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated, it’s because… I am. You should be too. They are an affront to every value this country was founded upon.”

“I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now. But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.

“These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”

“Cowardice can be contagious. But so too can courage…. Just as the hope that we hold onto in the darkness, shines with its own…special light.

“Tonight, I’m telling you what I’m willing to do…is fight—for our democracy, for our liberty, for the opportunity for all our people to live lives that are meaningful and free. And I see around me tonight a roomful of people who are ready to do the same.”

“So I have one question for all of you. Are you ready for the fight?”

To which I say “yes.” And “amen.”

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About That Rule Of Law…

On Tuesday, I spoke at the Zionsville Christian Church. I had been asked to define what is meant by the “rule of law,” and to explain why it is important. This is what I said. (Warning: longer than my usual posts.)

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Those of you who read my blog know that I refer a lot to the rule of law—how important it is, and how very negative the consequences are when governments ignore or violate it. What I don’t do often enough, however, is explain just what the rule of law is, and why it is the absolute bedrock of democratic governance.

Depending upon how you count them, there are seven essential elements that together make up the rule of law.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the first—the one most often cited by scholars and lawyers. That’s legal supremacy, which means that the law—the same law—applies to everyone. Another way to say that is “No one is above the law.” The importance of equal application of the law to everyone should be obvious; if elected or appointed officials weren’t restrained by the law, if We the People had to obey the laws but those in authority didn’t have to, the result would be what we lawyer types like to call “arbitrary and capricious” behavior by government officials, who would be free to use their authority in unfair and unjust ways, as monarchs used to do.

In democratic countries pledged to the rule of law, we don’t have kings who are free to ignore the rules the rest of us must live by.

The second element is really another version of the first. If the law applies to everyone, then everyone is entitled to equality before the law.  In an ideal “rule of law” system (which I’m compelled to admit we’ve never had), everyone would have equal access to—and equal treatment under– the laws of the land. Things like social status, wealth, elective office, and popular or  unpopular political beliefs wouldn’t affect access to or operation of the legal process or the way the laws are applied to individuals. The rule of law requires us to work toward a system in which laws and legal procedures are applied to all individuals equally and without favoritism.

To take an example from the headlines, under the rule of law, a government accusation that someone is a “bad actor” or a gang member, or “a threat to America” cannot relieve that government of its obligation to demonstrate the validity of such accusations in a court of law before it can punish that individual. That is what is meant by “due process of law” and due process is foundational to a fair and impartial legal system.

The third element of the rule of law is accountability. In other words, We the People are entitled to know what our government is doing, and whether it is functioning in a constitutionally appropriate manner. In the United States, a major element of accountability is built into our constitutional structure—what most of us learned in high school government classes as “checks and balances”—the division of legal authority among the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our government.

We are now seeing what happens to accountability and the rule of law when one branch of our government fails or refuses to exercise the powers granted to it by the Constitution—when the legislative branch allows the executive to appropriate and abuse powers that have been vested in the legislature. Future historians—assuming we have them—will identify that cowardly failure as a rejection of both elective responsibility and the rule of law, and a betrayal of the Constitution and of the individual legislator’s oath of office.

The fourth element of the rule of law is its interpretation and application by a fair and independent judiciary. Federal judges have lifetime appointments because the Founders’ believed that judges should be shielded from political passions and reprisals, that they should be able to apply the law and facts as they see them, free of pressure or bias.

That judicial independence has recently come under an unprecedented attack, when the administration arrested a Wisconsin judge who failed to knuckle under to demands by ICE to turn over a defendant in her courtroom.If Judges can be arrested for disagreeing with the executive branch about their authority,–in this case, evidently because the judge found ICE had an incorrect warrant–we no longer have checks and balances or the rule of law.

The Founders’ goal of judicial independence remains important, but it’s true that in today’s America we have encountered a consequence to lifetime appointments that the Founders didn’t foresee; Americans today live much longer and there is consequently much less frequent judicial turnover –especially at the Supreme Court. That concern is heightened by evidence that at least two members of the current high court are ethically compromised.

The lower federal courts, on the other hand, have been functioning  properly; those courts have issued a number of important decisions upholding the rule of law and restraining Trump’s flood of unlawful and unconstitutional executive orders. Unfortunately, within the legal community there is substantial concern about the degree to which our compromised Supreme Court will uphold those lower court decisions. Should it fail to do so, we risk losing the rule of law.

If we do emerge from this terrifying time with our legal system largely intact, imposing 18 year term limits on Supreme Court justices—as many scholars have suggested– would achieve the Founders’ goal of insulating jurists from political pressure, while also minimizing the risks of judicial senility. (If the legislature once again operates properly, judges shown to be ethically compromised can be impeached.)

The fifth element of the rule of law is certainty. Laws must be clear and understandable in order to allow citizens to know what behaviors are expected of them. When you read that a law has been found “void for vagueness,” it’s because some legislative edict has failed to clearly explain what behavior is being banned or required. Certainty also requires continuity and predictability—meaning legislators should avoid frequent and dramatic changes in the laws that make it hard for citizens to keep abreast of their responsibilities.

The sixth element, again, is implied by others: all citizens must have access to the legal system and the means of redress. That means all are entitled to legal representation and to fair trials with impartial judges.

And finally, the seventh element echoes the protections in America’s Bill of Rights: the rule of law must protect the rights that have been found essential to human liberty—what we call “human rights.” As I used to tell my students, it’s important to recognize that the Bill of Rights does not confer rights on American citizens—it forbids the government from interfering with the inalienable rights that we possess by virtue of our humanity.

Those basic rights include freedom of speech and religion, the right to due process, the freedom to go about our business without arbitrary interference, freedom from excessive, cruel or unusual punishments, the right to trial by jury, the right to be treated equally by our government…in other words, the right to live under a regime that respects the rule of law.

Everything I’ve said so far has revolved around longstanding notions of fairness and morality, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are also very practical reasons for supporting the rule of law. Mountains of scholarly research have confirmed that countries where the rule of law is established and respected are more stable and have far more robust economies. As we are seeing, uncertainty and chaos are bad for business!

Attacks on the rule of law like those we are currently experiencing destroy trust in government, undermine the economy, and promote conflict and violence.

No government is perfect, and ours certainly can be improved. But  improvements have to be made with fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law—not from the willful destruction of the underlying philosophy of this country, a philosophy I call “The American Idea.” It is that Idea, that philosophical framework, that insistence on the primacy of the rule of law, that has fostered social progress and truly made America great.

It’s up to We the People to protect it.

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Patrimonialism

What in the world is “patrimonialism”?

In a recent Atlantic essay, Jonathan Rauch argues that Trump’s approach to governance isn’t classic authoritarianism, autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Instead, Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. (I’m evidently not much of a scholar, because that’s a term I had never previously encountered. Live and learn…)

Rauch began by describing what we’ve all seen:

Since taking office, he has reduced his administration’s effectiveness by appointing to essential agencies people who lack the skills and temperaments to do their jobs. His mass firings have emptied the civil service of many of its most capable employees. He has defied laws that he could just as easily have followed (for instance, refusing to notify Congress 30 days before firing inspectors general). He has disregarded the plain language of statutes, court rulings, and the Constitution, setting up confrontations with the courts that he is likely to lose. Few of his orders have gone through a policy-development process that helps ensure they won’t fail or backfire—thus ensuring that many will.

In foreign affairs, he has antagonized Denmark, Canada, and Panama; renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”; and unveiled a Gaz-a-Lago plan. For good measure, he named himself chair of the Kennedy Center, as if he didn’t have enough to do.

Rauch cites to scholarship that locates the origin of the term in the writings of Max Weber–he of the Protestant ethic.

Weber explored the issue of legitimacy. What elements of leadership support an individual’s claim to rightful rule? According to Weber, there are two avenues to such legitimacy. One is “bureaucratic proceduralism”– a system in which following the rules and norms of institutions bestows legitimacy,. That, of course, is the system Americans have taken for granted. It’s why Presidents, federal officials, and military inductees swear their oath to the Constitution, not to a person.

The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” Hanson and Kopstein write. “The state was little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler; it did not exist as a separate entity.” Weber called this system “patrimonialism” because rulers claimed to be the symbolic father of the people—the state’s personification and protector. Exactly that idea was implied in Trump’s own chilling declaration: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

In his day, Weber thought that patrimonialism was on its way to history’s scrap heap. Its personalized style of rule was too inexpert and capricious to manage the complex economies and military machines that, after Bismarck, became the hallmarks of modern statehood. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

As Rauch explains, patrimonialism isn’t a systematic approach to governing; instead, it is “a style of governing,” replacing  rule-based, formal lines of authority with highly personalized ones based on loyalty to an individual. It’s a “system” of rewarding the leader’s friends and punishing his enemies. (Think about how “governance” works in tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.)

In government, it’s running the state “as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business.”

The difference between patrimonialism and autocracy is the former’s disdain for bureaucracy, because bureaucratic rules and processes might obstruct the “dear leader’s” desired actions.

People with expertise, experience, and distinguished résumés are likewise suspect because they bring independent standing and authority. So patrimonialism stocks the government with nonentities and hacks, or, when possible, it bypasses bureaucratic procedures altogether. When security officials at USAID tried to protect classified information from Elon Musk’s uncleared DOGE team, they were simply put on leave. Patrimonial governance’s aversion to formalism makes it capricious and even whimsical—such as when the leader announces, out of nowhere, the renaming of international bodies of water or the U.S. occupation of Gaza.

Rauch points out that Trump is patrimonialism “perfect organism.” He’s unable to distinguish between public and private, legal and illegal, national and personal. As John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security advisor, said “He can’t tell the difference between his own personal interest and the national interest, if he even understands what the national interest is.”

Patrimonialism has two fatal flaws: incompetence and corruption, and Rauch spends much of the essay documenting the evidence of both. It is well worth your time to click through and read in its entirety, especially since most observers–including this one–have been fixated on the incompetence and insanity, and only vaguely aware of the copious corruption. As Rauch reminds us, however, corruption is the real Achilles’ heel, because it’s understandable– not an abstraction like “democracy” or “Constitution” or “rule of law.”

The resistance needs to focus on it.

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Send This To Your Republican Senator Or Representative

Stuart Stevens is one of the “Never Trump” Republicans who established Lincoln Square Media. In a recent Substack newsletter, he traced the decline of the GOP into its current cult form, and described what he called “the great betrayal”–the squandering and shaming of the legacy left by former Republican defenders of freedom and liberty. Stevens bemoaned what he sees as MAGA’s dishonoring of the sacrifices made by the “greatest generation”–the soldiers who fought and died to defeat fascism in the second World War, of whom his father was one.

What struck me about this particular diatribe, however, wasn’t the understandable despair by a former partisan over the party’s abandonment of long-held principles. It was the following message, aimed directly at the spineless Republicans currently “serving” in the U.S. House and Senate.

As I read these four brief paragraphs, I became absolutely convinced that they hold a message that thousands of us should reproduce and send to the cowardly Republican Senators and Representatives who are refusing to do their jobs.

 We should never lose sight that Republicans can end the evil that is creeping over America at any time. No one is asking them to take a beach or charge a machine gun. No one is forcing them to support a president who Russia helped elect and now is delivering for Russia in ways that not even the most vodka-drenched FSB colonel dared hope. They can do what Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, and a handful of others have done. They stood up for what they knew was right, and lo and behold, they still walk the earth. They are not superhuman or Gods, just decent human beings. You could be the same.

Winston Churchill said of the Battle of Britain pilots, “Never was so much owed to so few.” To these cowardly Republicans, we can only say, “Never was so few to blame for so much.” The murdered innocents in Ukraine are your legacy. An America that votes in the U.N. with Russia and North Korea is your legacy. You go to bed and wake up, hoping that shame is an endangered species headed to extinction.

But you know you have failed the moral test of our time. You know the face you see in the mirror is a coward. You will be remembered without respect. You have allowed evil to sit at America’s table and feast on what is good and right about our country.

May God have mercy upon your souls. History will have none.

Read those paragraphs again. They distill the contempt so many of us feel for the political posturing and excuses that are offered by elected officials who are too timid to protect even their own legal and governing perquisites. Stevens isn’t taking aim at the Red State “true believers”–the racists, the White Christian Nationalists, the conspiracy theory buffoons. He isn’t expecting thoughtful  and considered action from the Marjorie Taylor Green/Jim Banks contingent, aka the “crazies.” He is describing the many Republicans who actually know that we have three branches of government, and that the Constitution has vested specific governmental powers to each of them.

He is reminding them that they have the legal and constitutional authority to stop the madness and destruction. All they have to do is use the powers that are constitutionally theirs. Congress could revoke the insane tariffs tomorrow. Congress could refuse to allow the Russian asset in the Oval Office to shame us, and continue to support Ukraine. Congress could begin investigations of the multiple corruptions that this lawless President doesn’t even try to hide (his solicitation of bribes via “sales” of his meme coins, to take just one example.)   

I don’t know whether Senator Jim Banks is a MAGA ideologue or simply corrupt in the Trump mold, but Indiana Senator Todd Young obviously understands how fraught America’s situation is. His discomfort with Trumpism, however, routinely dissipates when it’s time to cast a ballot–his vote to confirm the disastrous Pete Hegseth is only the most recent example.

Last week, some 300 Hoosiers rallied outside Young’s Indianapolis office. My sister participated. She has back problems and used a walker; the sign on that walker echoed Stuart Stevens’ message. It said “My spine isn’t perfect–but I have one.”

America could emerge from its precipitous national decline almost immediately-if Republicans in Congress regrew their spines. And it wouldn’t take all of them– a principled handful would be sufficient to put the brakes on Trump’s coup.

Stevens is right: God may or may not have mercy upon their souls, but history–and the rest of us– most definitely will not.

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