Donald Trump won the 2016 nomination because he convinced Republicans that he was a fighter. It was clear that the Obama party was stopping at nothing to win. Obama himself had already renounced America’s great bipartisan accomplishment of embracing a color-blind society. Instead, he sought to win by increasing racial tensions. Mitt Romney, of all people, was defeated because he was going to put America’s Blacks back in chains, as the gentle and moderate Obamaite Joe Biden put it.
How do you fight back against those who were stopping at nothing to win? By taking as your man a no-holds-barred street fighter who was fixated entirely on winning, polite norms of discourse be damned.
If we choose the fighter, are we falling into the pit of the FISA frauds, regularizing what must never be regularized, losing the battle for freedom by betraying it in ourselves, permanently sacrificing principle to expedience?
The choice of the Republicans did not please all conservatives. In the best case, there were those who felt that to sink to the level of the left, to put winning as the only thing, was a betrayal of principle and entirely unethical. Marx believed all was power and ends justify the means. Adopt that and we’ve become Marxists ourselves. Surely, we believe that principle should guide power, not the other way around, that we have faith in the good even when times are tough. We will bide our time if we must. But never, never should we become ourselves the power-centered political creatures that we have always opposed on principle.
Yet most conservatives, and certainly the majority of Republican primary voters, felt that urgent times required urgent measures. We simply could not allow ourselves to go down without a fight and cede the American Constitution to a left that would hollow it out and leave only its dead corpse, like the Mme. Tussaud Lenin in his mausoleum.
They picked Trump because he could win the fight. And sometimes, winning is what is absolutely necessary.
Victor Davis Hanson has written about the fighters who have appeared in times of crisis to save our Republic. William Tecumseh Sherman and George Patton knew how to win at war. They were not polite; they broke rules; they seemed savage. They would not have succeeded in less extreme times. But if we wanted to break the back of the slavery cause, if we wanted to destroy the Nazi colossus and its unspeakable evil, we knew we had to go with the uncivilized guy, the fighter who was devoted to victory and not to being liked.
Emergencies happen, and if not treated as such, can destroy free societies. The Founders understood that. They put a clause in the Constitution reflecting the necessity to suspend even the most elementary freedom — habeas corpus, our protection against just being locked up by the government without charge — in times of emergency. As proven by the Nazis, by the Communists, and by Hamas, the forces of tyranny need only win one election democratically.
Yet there is an inherent danger: that emergency power once taken might never be released. The result in the end is the same.
Where must we stand firm on principle? Where must we say with Churchill, that if Hitler attacked Hell, he would at least make a favorable mention of the devil in the House of Commons?
Lincoln presented the dilemma precisely:
Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?
Let’s take the FISA courts as an example. It’s clear that we had a terrible intelligence failure before September 11, 2001. Unless we wanted to fall to our enemies, we had to increase our ability to surveil our foreign enemies. We decided that our government should not be “too weak to maintain its own existence”.
Yet now we see, according to the FISA courts themselves, that there have been in the neighborhood of 100,000 cases in which the FBI used FISA illegitimately to surveil American citizens. A government “too strong for the liberties of its people”? The plummeting faith of American citizens in the FBI and the federal law enforcement and intelligence apparatus answers that question in the affirmative.
What Lincoln makes clear is that it is a constant, unending tension. In extremis, we legitimately pull out the stops. We employ a Sherman, a Patton, a Trump to take care of business.
But as a resilient free society, we know the danger of always living in the emergency mode. We didn’t employ Sherman or Patton beyond the wars in which they excelled. Most Americans didn’t vote for Trump even in 2016.
Who can perfectly balance the forces pulling from these two poles? If we choose the fighter, are we falling into the pit of the FISA frauds, regularizing what must never be regularized, losing the battle for freedom by betraying it in ourselves, permanently sacrificing principle to expedience? If we choose the conciliator, do we fail to battle the threat from without that we know is targeting our freedom and so effectively concede to the hostile forces?
True greatness is rare. But rare as it is, it offers the model that should guide us.
Lincoln was such a model. He took emergency power when it was necessary and relinquished it as soon as he could. Washington was such a model, taking the reins of power when no one else could do the job, but choosing after two terms to voluntarily retire and return to hearth and home. Churchill was such a model, accumulating incredible emergency powers in his hand and relinquishing them as the emergency receded and victory approached.
Let’s not pretend that any partial program that addresses only one side of the balance is all we need. Let’s articulate a real vision of leadership that is worthy of the greatest leaders free societies have ever brought forth. The American people will thank us for it. Our future selves will thank us for it.