A note about David Pozen... quite a bright guy, no doubt, but back during my time writing for Columbia Law School I had to promote a rather eyebrow-raising journal article that he wrote about constitutional "Self-Help." Essentially, he was arguing that when Congress didn't fulfill its obligations according to unspoken norms, the executive branch might very well be enacting totally legitimate "self-help" to go ahead and do via agency what Congress was refusing to do via legislation. It was an article that I had a ton of ethical compunctions about promoting, because it came awfully close to endorsing autocratic unilateral rule by the Obama White House since congressional Republicans weren't rubber stamping his agenda.
No doubt Pozen is in earnest -- his article was a tidy summation of the zeitgeist on the legal left at the time -- but given his paper trail he's simply not a viable critic of another administration seizing maximalist executive power. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I'm a retired lawyer, and I have a different view. No matter which of the three stories you accept, there is a bottom line in our constitutional structure, and that is the politics of the voters. That is where power comes from. If there is a change happening, it is in what voters will accept.
All elected politicians use their judgment about where their constituents are politically, and at a minimum, what they will live with. This is a bet; sometimes the elected are right, sometimes not.
Donald Trump is coloring way outside the constitutional lines, because this is his second term and he won't be getting another. This is not normal. Some presidents have pushed the envelope, but none has encouraged a governmental coup, used the military time and again against states and cities; declared war against drug dealers and then bombed boats without even trying to present any evidence for why, much less get congressional approval; tariffed the entire world, and God knows what tomorrow will bring. Trump is betting that "his" GOP will continue protecting him with their neglect, and so far he's been right.
But members of Congress, too are making a more direct and ultimately politically accountable bet. They are judging that their constituents will let Trump keep doing what he's doing, and that their constituents, particularly those of House members and Senators up for reelection will continue to live with Trump's actions and Congressional la-di-dah. So far there hasn't been much response in the country, though there are signs that is changing.
There is some chance that the Supreme Court will hold the line on some separation of power questions. That is their job, and I can see them doing it, though that is something I'll be keeping an eye on.
But in the end, my bet (I was never elected to anything, so I speak only for myself) is that Trump's overreach will ultimately have some effect. A good number of folks who voted for him will accept anything he does. But a lot of people voted for him, not because they loved him but because they hated Kamala Harris and the Democrats more. It's those folks who I'm most interested in, and who I think congressional Republicans are thinking about too.
If they are willing to accept Trump, then it's fair to say we don't have a constitutional crisis, we have a political one. Or if it's not a crisis, it's a political shift of enormous magnitude. The Constitutional doesn't just allow politics, it depends on them. And politics does change. I'm hoping that's not true, but Aldous Huxley is definitely top of mind. Orwell posited dictatorship coming from the top down, while Huxley saw it coming from the bottom up -- from our own addiction to self-chosen comforts and pleasures.
That's what I worry about most, because no Constitution and no laws can ever address that in a government based on liberty.
Trump has no choice but to act decisively. The feminized, oikophobic self-perpetuating motion machine (sacred victim-entitled parasite encouraged, requiring more government intervention and dependecny in response) engineered by the DEI/government/NGO complex has reached a point where the US and western Europe either maintain their civilization or DIE.
Oikophobia: An extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West appears to be the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of Hellenic Christianity by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric". (Mark Dooley, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum 2009), p. 78.)
To freely criticize one's own government when it is wrong is a high form of patriotism. So, I submit, killing people in small craft off the shores of South America without conclusive proof of criminality or malicious intent is simply government sponsored murder. I'm sure you agree.
Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure what the term "patriotism" has to do with my comment. Oikophobes view themselves as patriotic and anyone who critiques their sacred victim/entitled parasite culture is viewed as being unpatriotic, or worse – e.g. racist, sexist, homophobic, white supremacist, fascist, and so on. I'm trying to describe a spiritual/cultural phenomenon. Patriot, or not, is irrelevant.
The demystification of tradition and the rejection of authority has evolved since the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s when I experienced it while in college. Oikophobia is a term I had not previously encountered, but it does describe the contempt and derision visited upon Western civilization by its critics from the post modernist school. Oikophobia is now practiced by both the post-modernist, contemptuous progressives and by the MAGA, revenge-fueled right. A sad and hate-sodden characterization of how far we have fallen.
I agree with your comment up to your correlation of MAGA with modern progressivism. That doesn't make sense to me. As far as I know Trump has no "extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred" traditions of the West. Revenge isn't anti-Western, if that's what you mean. Neither is hate. After all, he's human, not a god.
He might be more of a sacred honor type. He's defending his honor after the impeachments, slurs, law suits, etc. That's not anti-Western. Someone hits you, you hit them back. You, personally, may not like him but that's another story.
Well, it's coherent in terms of rules like the 10 commandments. It's as coherent as any organized religion such as Judaism. Islam or Buddhism. The point is, it's a book that one can read and argue over. And these divinely inspired stories, parables and metaphors give human life meaning and identity. There is no such thng in modern liberalism. Just the opposite.
Modern liberalism seems to need victims and there's only one oppressor group – white men and Christians. Which is odd since they are the ones who built the institutions in the first place. That seems pretty incoherent to me. For instance. modern liberals are so alienated these days they have trouble understanding what sex they are or what is a woman.
I would say historically, a combination of pagan vitality and traditional Christianity worked best for the vast majority of Europeans in terms of identity and meaning.
You've succeeded in creating strawman versions of both liberalism and christianity. For the latter, are you suggesting that because God approves of incest, rape, slavery, genocide etc that we should to? If you actually follow the development of morality and ethics (starting many thousands of years ago), it's the religion of the day that has adapted to society, and not the other way around.
And you are merely projecting your own spiritual poverty by attempting to degrade the grandeur of traditional European spiritual life. And only European, no other group. Like I said, oikophobia.
Kenneth, you can't separate religion from "society." A belief in "something" whether the gods or Marx or diversitopia is fundemental to human consciousness. You seem to have trouble comprehending this. At some evolutionary point, beautifully described as the Garden of Eden in the Bible, humans became aware of sin. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Surely, you understand this.
Trump is a useful idiot for the same oligarchs who've constituted the elites in most nations throughout the history of society since the implementation of settled agriculture and the consequent development of a rigid caste system. Period.
Stories 1, 2, and 3 all run parallel to Story 0: the individual tantrum that is Donald Trump's life. The people working with him -- handling him by means of his weaknesses and delusions -- have political schemes, no doubt; but Trump himself is without politics, principles, opinions on constitutionality, or notions about the arc of history. He simply wishes to impose his will on his personal environment, firstly for self-protection and secondly for spite. The consequences may prove momentous, but the impetus is degradingly petty.
Damon Linker, one question: "Who did you vote for in the last election?" The question is rhetorical for it is very obvious as to what Party has your vote.
Why are cliches just that? Because they are overused to the state of boredom but their repetition is on account that they refer to common situations. "History may not repeat itself but it rhymes." There are those that say there is nothing new in politics, it has all been seen/done before, if one looks far enough back through the centuries.
It is the predictions of the presenter who has not joined the dots correctly, that is to be questioned.
For those of us who do not support the excesses of the Trump administration, we need a new playbook. The actions tried in Story 1 didn't work, perhaps because the leaders of the loyal opposition were just not up to the task. The corrections posited in Story 2 just aren't going to happen in our lifetimes or this century. That leaves us in the opposition looking very much like the characters in the painting "The Raft of the Medusa", hoping that someone or something will rescue us while time moves ahead and things get worse.
A note about David Pozen... quite a bright guy, no doubt, but back during my time writing for Columbia Law School I had to promote a rather eyebrow-raising journal article that he wrote about constitutional "Self-Help." Essentially, he was arguing that when Congress didn't fulfill its obligations according to unspoken norms, the executive branch might very well be enacting totally legitimate "self-help" to go ahead and do via agency what Congress was refusing to do via legislation. It was an article that I had a ton of ethical compunctions about promoting, because it came awfully close to endorsing autocratic unilateral rule by the Obama White House since congressional Republicans weren't rubber stamping his agenda.
No doubt Pozen is in earnest -- his article was a tidy summation of the zeitgeist on the legal left at the time -- but given his paper trail he's simply not a viable critic of another administration seizing maximalist executive power. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I'm a retired lawyer, and I have a different view. No matter which of the three stories you accept, there is a bottom line in our constitutional structure, and that is the politics of the voters. That is where power comes from. If there is a change happening, it is in what voters will accept.
All elected politicians use their judgment about where their constituents are politically, and at a minimum, what they will live with. This is a bet; sometimes the elected are right, sometimes not.
Donald Trump is coloring way outside the constitutional lines, because this is his second term and he won't be getting another. This is not normal. Some presidents have pushed the envelope, but none has encouraged a governmental coup, used the military time and again against states and cities; declared war against drug dealers and then bombed boats without even trying to present any evidence for why, much less get congressional approval; tariffed the entire world, and God knows what tomorrow will bring. Trump is betting that "his" GOP will continue protecting him with their neglect, and so far he's been right.
But members of Congress, too are making a more direct and ultimately politically accountable bet. They are judging that their constituents will let Trump keep doing what he's doing, and that their constituents, particularly those of House members and Senators up for reelection will continue to live with Trump's actions and Congressional la-di-dah. So far there hasn't been much response in the country, though there are signs that is changing.
There is some chance that the Supreme Court will hold the line on some separation of power questions. That is their job, and I can see them doing it, though that is something I'll be keeping an eye on.
But in the end, my bet (I was never elected to anything, so I speak only for myself) is that Trump's overreach will ultimately have some effect. A good number of folks who voted for him will accept anything he does. But a lot of people voted for him, not because they loved him but because they hated Kamala Harris and the Democrats more. It's those folks who I'm most interested in, and who I think congressional Republicans are thinking about too.
If they are willing to accept Trump, then it's fair to say we don't have a constitutional crisis, we have a political one. Or if it's not a crisis, it's a political shift of enormous magnitude. The Constitutional doesn't just allow politics, it depends on them. And politics does change. I'm hoping that's not true, but Aldous Huxley is definitely top of mind. Orwell posited dictatorship coming from the top down, while Huxley saw it coming from the bottom up -- from our own addiction to self-chosen comforts and pleasures.
That's what I worry about most, because no Constitution and no laws can ever address that in a government based on liberty.
Trump has no choice but to act decisively. The feminized, oikophobic self-perpetuating motion machine (sacred victim-entitled parasite encouraged, requiring more government intervention and dependecny in response) engineered by the DEI/government/NGO complex has reached a point where the US and western Europe either maintain their civilization or DIE.
Oikophobia: An extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West appears to be the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of Hellenic Christianity by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric". (Mark Dooley, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum 2009), p. 78.)
To freely criticize one's own government when it is wrong is a high form of patriotism. So, I submit, killing people in small craft off the shores of South America without conclusive proof of criminality or malicious intent is simply government sponsored murder. I'm sure you agree.
Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure what the term "patriotism" has to do with my comment. Oikophobes view themselves as patriotic and anyone who critiques their sacred victim/entitled parasite culture is viewed as being unpatriotic, or worse – e.g. racist, sexist, homophobic, white supremacist, fascist, and so on. I'm trying to describe a spiritual/cultural phenomenon. Patriot, or not, is irrelevant.
The demystification of tradition and the rejection of authority has evolved since the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s when I experienced it while in college. Oikophobia is a term I had not previously encountered, but it does describe the contempt and derision visited upon Western civilization by its critics from the post modernist school. Oikophobia is now practiced by both the post-modernist, contemptuous progressives and by the MAGA, revenge-fueled right. A sad and hate-sodden characterization of how far we have fallen.
I agree with your comment up to your correlation of MAGA with modern progressivism. That doesn't make sense to me. As far as I know Trump has no "extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred" traditions of the West. Revenge isn't anti-Western, if that's what you mean. Neither is hate. After all, he's human, not a god.
He might be more of a sacred honor type. He's defending his honor after the impeachments, slurs, law suits, etc. That's not anti-Western. Someone hits you, you hit them back. You, personally, may not like him but that's another story.
Are you suggesting that Hellenic Christianity is a coherent system of belief? Have you actually read the bible?
Well, it's coherent in terms of rules like the 10 commandments. It's as coherent as any organized religion such as Judaism. Islam or Buddhism. The point is, it's a book that one can read and argue over. And these divinely inspired stories, parables and metaphors give human life meaning and identity. There is no such thng in modern liberalism. Just the opposite.
Modern liberalism seems to need victims and there's only one oppressor group – white men and Christians. Which is odd since they are the ones who built the institutions in the first place. That seems pretty incoherent to me. For instance. modern liberals are so alienated these days they have trouble understanding what sex they are or what is a woman.
I would say historically, a combination of pagan vitality and traditional Christianity worked best for the vast majority of Europeans in terms of identity and meaning.
You've succeeded in creating strawman versions of both liberalism and christianity. For the latter, are you suggesting that because God approves of incest, rape, slavery, genocide etc that we should to? If you actually follow the development of morality and ethics (starting many thousands of years ago), it's the religion of the day that has adapted to society, and not the other way around.
And you are merely projecting your own spiritual poverty by attempting to degrade the grandeur of traditional European spiritual life. And only European, no other group. Like I said, oikophobia.
I guess that's what you'd like to believe. However, I'm merely describing historical reality. And my spirit is anything but poor, thanks for asking.
Kenneth, you can't separate religion from "society." A belief in "something" whether the gods or Marx or diversitopia is fundemental to human consciousness. You seem to have trouble comprehending this. At some evolutionary point, beautifully described as the Garden of Eden in the Bible, humans became aware of sin. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Surely, you understand this.
Trump is a useful idiot for the same oligarchs who've constituted the elites in most nations throughout the history of society since the implementation of settled agriculture and the consequent development of a rigid caste system. Period.
Stories 1, 2, and 3 all run parallel to Story 0: the individual tantrum that is Donald Trump's life. The people working with him -- handling him by means of his weaknesses and delusions -- have political schemes, no doubt; but Trump himself is without politics, principles, opinions on constitutionality, or notions about the arc of history. He simply wishes to impose his will on his personal environment, firstly for self-protection and secondly for spite. The consequences may prove momentous, but the impetus is degradingly petty.
https://thefamilyproperty.blogspot.com/2025/08/absurdly-simple.html
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/21/american-revolutions-9-parts-locke-1-part-hobbes/
A most interesting and well presented article.
Damon Linker, one question: "Who did you vote for in the last election?" The question is rhetorical for it is very obvious as to what Party has your vote.
Why are cliches just that? Because they are overused to the state of boredom but their repetition is on account that they refer to common situations. "History may not repeat itself but it rhymes." There are those that say there is nothing new in politics, it has all been seen/done before, if one looks far enough back through the centuries.
It is the predictions of the presenter who has not joined the dots correctly, that is to be questioned.
Once again, a well-configured argument. If only I could be a college student at Penn.
For those of us who do not support the excesses of the Trump administration, we need a new playbook. The actions tried in Story 1 didn't work, perhaps because the leaders of the loyal opposition were just not up to the task. The corrections posited in Story 2 just aren't going to happen in our lifetimes or this century. That leaves us in the opposition looking very much like the characters in the painting "The Raft of the Medusa", hoping that someone or something will rescue us while time moves ahead and things get worse.