Conservatives have been
complaining loudly about rulings by federal district court judges that are
obstructing the Trump administration’s objectives. However, during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden
years, they happily used the same tactics to gum up the operations of those
administrations. CNN captures
some of the irony:
‘President Donald Trump and
top allies who have questioned
the constitutionality of recent court orders blocking the administration’s
agenda touted similar rulings by federal courts as “great news” and “brilliant”
when they paused President Joe Biden’s policies.
‘When a federal judge in
Texas halted
a Biden administration pause on deportations six days after Trump was
inaugurated, presidential aide Stephen Miller took to social
media to describe the temporary restraining order as “great news.” When a
judge in Louisiana blocked Biden aides from asking social
media platforms to remove content, Trump called the decision “amazing.”
‘“Just last week, in a
historic ruling, a brilliant federal judge ordered the Biden administration to
cease and desist from their illegal and unconstitutional censorship in
collusion with social media,” Trump told an audience in Florida in 2023. (The Supreme Court
months later would decide in Biden’s favor.)
‘ . . . Republicans have
increasingly complained about outside groups choosing courts they believe will
rule in their favor – a practice known as judge shopping. Democrats loudly
protested that same practice during the Biden and Obama administrations, when
Republican-aligned groups frequently sued in Texas or Louisiana where they
could bring appeals to the especially conservative 5th Circuit.
‘ . . . Sebastian Gorka, who
worked in Trump’s first White House and who the president has named senior
director for counterterrorism this time around, reposted
a message on X last month describing US District Judge Paul Engelmayer, an
Obama appointee, as a “rogue judge.” But he celebrated a nationwide injunction
against Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers in 2021 in a social media
repost, suggesting that a “Federal Judge” had stepped in to block Biden’s
“abuse of power.”
‘Trump himself repeatedly
touted or commented on temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions
that blocked the Biden administration’s policies.
‘When a federal judge in
Louisiana in 2022 issued a preliminary injunction halting the administration
from ending the Title 42 program, which allowed the administration to speed the
removal of certain migrants, Trump reposted a supporter on his Truth Social
platform thanking US District Judge Robert Summerhays for the ruling. Trump
appointed Summerhays to the bench during his first term’ (John Fritze, ‘Trump
and allies celebrated court orders against Biden they now claim are
‘tyrannical’,’ cnn.com).
The Revivalists on the Right
have their answer for the charge of inconsistency:
‘White House spokesperson
Harrison Fields dismissed the comparison between the Biden-era orders and those
issued in the early weeks of the Trump administration.
‘“It’s simple: Biden abused
his executive power to implement policies not within the scope of his
presidential powers, while President Trump is appropriately using his executive
authority to implement his America First agenda,” Fields told CNN. “These court
orders from left-wing judges are a continuation of judicial weaponization that
Americans voted against at the ballot box on November 5”’ (Ibid.).
Therein lies the
problem: a fundamental disagreement
amongst the peoples of the States over the nature of government and the legitimate
ends it is meant to accomplish. Thomas
Sowell in his book A Conflict of Visions located the source of the
disagreement in two opposing views of human nature – one utopian and
unconstrained, leading to a centralized, all-powerful government, the other experiential/pragmatic
and constrained, tending toward a smaller, decentralized, weaker government. An older version of this dichotomy is the
Alexander Hamilton (the US as a centralized empire) and Thomas Jefferson (the
US as a decentralized confederation) difference of views.
But even these are
oversimplifications of the problem. Many
people – whether on talk radio or in academia or in government or etc. – speak
of the US as though we were one people with one common culture. This is a false notion. There are several different cultures spread
out over the States, and, owing to the dominant ethnic groups that settled
them, they all have their particular ways of viewing the world, man,
government, etc. The
Scandinavian-Germanic Great Plains States are not the same as Dixie with her
folkways formed largely in southwestern England, the Celtic lands (Ireland,
Scotland, Wales), and sub-Saharan Africa, with some Spanish and French mixed in
as well. New England and their offspring
in Utah are from the coastal counties of southeastern England. And so forth and so on.
Now then, folks on the Right
have been rightly reiterating the point that transgenderism is a denial of
reality, that no matter how much a man may pretend he is a woman (or vice
versa), it doesn’t alter the fact that he is really a man. The same argument may be applied to the
United States: No matter how deeply one
believes that the States are all one homogenous people, it does not change the
underlying reality that we are in truth several peoples. There are plenty of essays and books about
this; one of the most recent we have read is Grady McWhiney’s Cracker
Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South.
Denying this reality is
leading us down a dangerous road, one that could end in another terrible war if
we aren’t careful. Rod Dreher, the
far-seeing Louisiana writer living in Hungary, has been warning his readers
that the political climate in the US today resemble the heated ideological
turmoil of Spain prior to the civil war there (1936-9). The documentary video about
the prelude to the Spanish Civil War that he included recently at the end of
one of his
essays is worth a look by all serious-minded political observers. As he put it in the essay:
‘Last night, I was talking
with a retired military officer. He was telling me how happy he is that Trump
is righting so many woke wrongs. Yet, he said, “This is all happening so fast
and so powerfully that I can’t help wondering what’s going to happen when the
other side gets back into power. Are they going to come at us like this?”
‘I invite you to watch this
first episode of the Granada TV documentary from the 1980s, about the Spanish
Civil War. That dynamic is exactly what happened in Spain prior to the outbreak
of fighting’ (‘I'd Salute Trump Too,’ roddreher.substack.com).
Despite claims to the
contrary, Trump’s victory in 2024 wasn’t a landslide. Yes, he won a lot of States and
counties/parishes, but the overall margins in many of those States was very
narrow. The current configuration of the
federal House and Senate confirm the large ideological divide that persists
across the US. If we continue down the
road of insisting on the ‘one people’ fallacy and, following from that, use the
power of the federal government to force an ideology (whether Leftist or
Rightist) on all the States, we’re going to find ourselves in the middle of another
violent clash at some point. That is
lesson of the War between the States of 1861-5, the lesson of the Spanish Civil
War, the French Revolution, etc.
However, if we are going to
live in Realville, to use Rush Limbaugh’s words, we will notice that there are
other, better, options: radical
decentralization of the powers now held in DC as well as a separation of the
States into more culturally coherent federations. The first constitution of the States after
their secession from the British Empire, the Articles of Confederation, is a
good model of decentralized governance.
It had some defects, but it also protected the States from what has come
to be under the current constitution: consolidation into a centralized empire that is
‘aggressive abroad and despotic at home,’ to quote the perceptive Robert E.
Lee’s letter
to Lord Acton (15 Dec 1866, leefamilyarchive.org).
But there is some hope in
this regard, as even Left-leaning States like California are speaking about the
virtues of federalism/decentralization/States’ rights:
‘The governor of California
for example, upon hearing of Trump’s success, very quickly announced on social
media (on X) that “California
is ready to fight”, and federalism, as he added, “is the cornerstone
of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America”. Unbelievable!
Paradoxically, one must admit that there is something satisfying in observing
how the Left that governs or dominates in some states, in trying to defend
itself against the administration of Donald Trump, reaches for the instruments
of resistance to federal power that it has hated so far and so much’ (Karol
Mazur, ‘Progressive States’ Rights,’ abbevilleinstitute.org).
The Trump era won’t last
forever; Leftist Democrats will assume the powers of the federal government at
some point in the future. The peoples of
the States, if they indeed remain together in one federation, ought to retool
their coordinating government in DC such that changes at the federal level are
not viewed as existential dangers to their well-being that necessitate all-out
legal warfare in the judiciary – or worse.
Allow each State and culture to largely direct their own affairs; it is
the only way peaceful relations between them will be established and maintained.
***
Originally posted at https://identitydixie.com/2025/03/30/lawfare-for-me-but-not-for-thee/.
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
