"Every president, of course, creates a decision-making structure tailor-made for his own style."

"Franklin D. Roosevelt relied heavily on a kitchen cabinet. Harry S. Truman created the National Security Council to formally weigh options and coordinate among departments fighting the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter turned the N.S.C. into an idea generator. In the Obama administration, members of the N.S.C. staff talked about 'death by Situation Room meeting' and compared the process of policymaking to watching a python swallow a pig."

From "Trump Follows His Gut. His National Security Advisers Try to Keep Up. Decisions come fast, even if contradictions and inconsistencies abound. But without much of a process, there is little preparation for how things can go wrong" (NYT).

And Trump? He has, we're told, "reduced the size of the N.S.C. staff by at least two thirds.... And when debates take place, the number of players often shrinks to a tiny group.... Not much leaks from those sessions, a major change from, say, the early Obama era, when Situation Room conversations sometimes appeared on news websites before the meetings were over."

So then we don't really have a way of knowing what goes on. Well, the NYT writer, David Sanger, presents us with a quote from Thomas Wright, "a scholar at the Brookings Institution who worked on long-term strategic planning in the National Security Council during the Biden years," who purports to tell us what "Trump seems to think," which is that "he doesn’t need options or contingency plans. He just wants a small team to execute his instincts."

"As a young staff member in the Reagan administration, John G. Roberts Jr. was part of a group of lawyers who pushed for more White House control over independent government agencies."

"The 'time may be ripe to reconsider the existence of such entities, and take action to bring them back within the executive branch,' the future chief justice of the United States advised the White House counsel in a 1983 memo. Independent agencies, he wrote, were a 'Constitutional anomaly.' Once he ascended to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts joined other conservatives on the bench in a series of rulings that have chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain the president’s authority to fire independent regulators...."

From "Conservative Project at Supreme Court Meets Trump’s Push to Oust Officials/President Trump has repeatedly ousted leaders of independent agencies despite federal laws meant to shield those regulators from politics" (NYT).

The case — to be argued tomorrow — is Trump v. Slaughter.

The case to be overruled is Humphrey's Executor, discussed in this NYT article, "For Landmark Test of Executive Power, Echoes of a 1930s Supreme Court Battle/Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to oust a Federal Trade Commission leader offer parallels to the current fight over President Trump’s actions" — showing various letters from FDR to Humphrey, saying things like "You will, I know, realize that I do not feel that your mind and my mind go along together on either the policies or the administering of the Federal Trade Commission, and, frankly, I think it is best for the people of this country that I should have a full confidence."

"Every other recent president has said that he saw his role as transcending partisanship at least some of the time, to serve as leader of all Americans..."

"... even those who disagreed with him. George H.W. Bush talked of ushering in a 'kinder and gentler nation.' Mr. Clinton vowed to be the 'repairer of the breach.' The younger Mr. Bush spoke of being 'a uniter, not a divider.' Barack Obama rejected the idea of a red America and blue America, saying there was only 'the United States of America.' Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for ending 'this uncivil war.' None of them succeeded at achieving such lofty aspirations, and each of them to different degrees played the politics of division at times. Politics, after all, is about division — debating big ideas vigorously until one side wins an election or carries the vote in Congress. But none of them practiced the politics of division as ferociously and consistently as Mr. Trump...."

From "In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission/President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans" by Peter Baker, in the NYT.

Who is taking an accurate measure of the consistency and ferocity of the divisiveness of the various Presidents?

My prompt to ChatGPT: "What are the most ferociously divisive things Presidents have said in all of American history? Give me a top 10, with just the quotes, not the explanations."

The list [NOTE: I did not verify the accuracy of these quotes. What follows is with ChatGPT gave me and the entire thing could be hallucination. Proceed with care!]

"I have long thought that Humphrey’s Executor should be overruled because it is inconsistent with the Constitution’s vesting of all executive power in the President..."

"... and with more recent Supreme Court decisions. Of course, I agree with my colleagues that only the Supreme Court may overrule its precedents.... Granting a stay of the district court’s injunction, however, does not require this court to claim that Humphrey’s Executor has been overruled. Instead, the stay is warranted by the Supreme Court’s decisions to stay injunctions ordering the reinstatement of removed officers.... Everyone agrees that FTC commissioners are principal officers who exercise 'substantial executive power.'... The Constitution establishes three departments of the federal government, and the so-called independent agencies are necessarily part of the Executive Branch, not some headless fourth branch. Commissioners of the FTC exercise 'considerable executive power,' and such officers are not entitled to reinstatement while they litigate the lawfulness of their removal...."

Writes Judge Neomi Rao, dissenting, in Slaughter v. Trump. 

The NYT article about the case is "Federal Appeals Court Reinstates an F.T.C. Commissioner Fired by Trump/The court said the commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, had been illegally terminated 'without cause.'" Excerpt: "Since March, the F.T.C. has been led only by Republicans. Ms. Slaughter said in an interview Tuesday evening that she planned to go to the F.T.C. on Wednesday morning to work."

Here's the Wikipedia article on Humphrey's Executor. Excerpt: "The case involved William E. Humphrey, a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt had fired. Roosevelt had fired Humphrey over their policy disagreements involving economic regulation and the New Deal, even though the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 prohibited firing an FTC commissioner for any reason other than 'inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.'"

FDR wrote to Humphrey: "You will, I know, realize that I do not feel that your mind and my mind go along together on either the policies or the administering of the Federal Trade Commission, and, frankly, I think it is best for the people of this country that I should have a full confidence."

Until now, we had, living among us, the grandson of the 10th President of the United States.

I'm seeing this in The Richmonder: "Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. president and longtime Richmonder, dies at 96."

Born on Nov. 9, 1928 in Richmond, Tyler was the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler and Sue Ruffin. His father was a son of President John Tyler and president of William & Mary for more than three decades; his mother came from another Virginia family of long lineage and ardent support for slavery and secession.... President John Tyler was 63 when Lyon Gardiner Tyler was born; Lyon was 75 when Harrison entered the world.... At age 8, he was invited to the White House to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt....

My son Chris, who is dedicated to reading a biography of every American President, read "President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler," by Christopher J. Leahy (commission earned). Chris does not read books on Kindle, so when he wants to share something with me, he texts me a photo. For Tyler, he sent this:

"Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election."

Write Jake Tapper and Thompson in a book they call "Original Sin," quoted in "Exclusive: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says" (Axios).

The book will be out in a week, so presumably Axios can excerpt anything from the text and call it "exclusive."

Nothing wrong with needing a wheelchair while serving in government. Obviously, Franklin Roosevelt did it, but he also hid it. What's up with the shame? What does it say to people with disabilities to hide your need for a wheelchair? How can it be better to walk in a "halting" style and to risk falling? Was he in pain? Was he on painkillers?

It might be Bad Analogy Day on this blog — see the previous post — so I'll say it: It reminds me of a gay person in the closet. The hiding expresses shame that hurts others in your group and that underestimates the intelligence and empathy of those you're hiding from. Is that a bad analogy?

Speaking of things not done until after the election, here's Chuck Todd, denying responsibility for hiding Biden's fitness. I'm embedding this because Todd's inability to enact sincerity is so funny that I think an aspiring comic actor could use this as a model:

"Having escaped prison and death, President Trump has returned to power seeking vindication and vengeance — and done more in his first 100 days to change the trajectory of the country than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt."

That's the subheadline at the NYT article "After the Arrests and Bullets, Trump Takes on Second Term With a New Fervor" by Peter Baker in the NYT. Free-access link (because it's the last-day of the month and I over-hoarded by 10 free links and must use them or lose them).

In the opening chapter of this new term, Mr. Trump has acted like a man on a mission, moving with almost messianic fervor to transform America from top to bottom and exact retribution against enemies at the same time. He appears intent on demolishing the old order no matter the collateral damage, putting his personal imprint not just on government and foreign affairs but on almost every aspect of national life, including business, culture, sports, academia, the legal world and the media. 

"It's not the economy, stupid: Why Kamala Harris should focus on everything else."

 A headline over at Salon. The piece is by Joe Tauke. Excerpt:

[R]egardless of whatever economic statistics Harris or Biden or any other Democrat might throw out there... [polls] strongly imply that no amount of attempted persuasion will convince voters that they feel better about the economy now than they did during the Trump administration — because, well, they don’t. It’s not even close.... Moreover, real-time economic conditions (other than inflation) for the country appear to be deteriorating just as the campaign enters its most intense phase.... If voters in [swing] states are thinking about the economy when casting their ballots, Trump will win. If Harris can get them to think about virtually anything else (other than immigration), she’ll win. In 1992, during Bill Clinton’s winning effort against George H.W. Bush, “It’s the economy, stupid” was the best advice a Democratic campaign could follow. In 2024, it’s the best way for the latest Democratic nominee to lose.

Okay, but "virtually anything else"? Immigration? Endless wars? Going toe-to-toe with Putin? The Covid lockdown? Guns? Gender affirmation treatments? DEI? Rather than "anything else," the best advice — the advice she seems to be taking — is that nothing else is better. Kamala Harris is running as representing no issue at all. They say you can't beat something with nothing, but they are trying, and they think — I believe — it's their best hope... because the something (Donald Trump) is so monstrously, calamitously bad.

ADDED: I think the phrase "You can't beat something with nothing" originated with Will Rogers, and he was talking, in 1934, about Republicans running on nothing but the horribleness of their opponent — FDR:

BUT: I see I blogged about Will Rogers and the phrase "You can't beat something with nothing" last January, here. At the time, "I wanted to critique the Biden campaign strategy." Ha ha. Anyway, I determined last January that "Will Rogers didn't invent 'You can't beat something with nothing.' Even back then, it was an 'old saying.'"

"Adopting joy as a political shield has also allowed Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz to throw some bare-knuckled punches at Mr. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio."

"Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, has targeted Mr. Trump for his many legal problems — 'I know Donald Trump’s type,' she now likes to say, to uproarious applause and chants of 'Lock him up' that she only recently began to discourage. Mr. Walz has castigated Mr. Trump for 'servicing himself' instead of helping others, and made an off-color reference to a debunked rumor about Mr. Vance and furniture. Both Democrats do it with a smile, and the crowd eats it up.... Of course, Ms. Harris’s joyful-warrior approach has so far not been substantive from a policy perspective...."

Writes Katie Rogers in "Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign. Democrats are smiling again, and so is a vice president who once weighed the political risks of cheerfulness. The high spirits are also providing air cover for scathing attacks on Republicans" (NYT).

But maybe get-happy is policy enough: "In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted the song 'Happy Days Are Here Again' to offer a promise of a bright future to Americans stricken by the Great Depression.... In a time of war and economic recession, Barack Obama’s likeness was plastered on a poster [with] the message... 'Hope.'"

"[Nixon's] men broke into the Democratic National Committee in 1972—so what?"

"Lyndon B. Johnson’s men almost certainly bugged Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane in 1964. The John F. Kennedy administration authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. for its own political reasons. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration surveilled Charles Lindbergh when the famous aviator led the America First Committee and contemplated a presidential run in 1940. Did Nixon try—albeit unsuccessfully—to obtain the tax returns of political adversaries? Well, Roosevelt successfully ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate opponents such as William Randolph Hearst, Huey Long, and Charles Coughlin. Nixon operated a clandestine unit inside the White House—the so-called plumbers—to trace and stop officials who leaked to the media, you say? Under previous administrations, the FBI acted as a giant government-plumbing agency, surveilling troublesome journalists such as Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Indeed, a probably core reason for the exposure of the Watergate break-in was that the long alliance between Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover faltered after 1971, for complex reasons, obliging Nixon to use amateur investigators for the Watergate burglary and other black-bag jobs that, under past administrations, the FBI would have conducted for the president...."

Writes David Frum in "Richard Nixon Was Unlucky/The Watergate scandal forced his resignation 50 years ago. Today, he’d probably have gotten away with it" (The Atlantic).

Nixon gave his resignation speech 50 years ago last night.

ADDED: The Atlantic homepage has a link to Hunter S. Thompson, "He Was a Crook/A scathing obituary of Richard Nixon, originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994."

"Democrats tend to lose whenever they forget that they are, first and foremost, the party of working American families."

"Since the days when FDR won four consecutive presidential races, voters have looked to the Dems to fight for economic growth, which brings jobs and opportunity; provide a safety net to protect the unlucky from disaster; and regulate the marketplace to keep cheaters, predators, and monopolists at bay. Somewhere along the way, Democrats lost the plotline: Gallup polls show that Americans generally trust Republicans to do a better job of managing the economy, currently by a margin of 53 to 39 percent. Successful Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — the only two leaders of their party to win reelection since FDR — made it happen by focusing like a laser on the economy.... ... Harris has to avoid the distraction of meme wars and juvenile name calling. Instead, she should stay laser focused on a proven issue on which she and Democrats can win. The economy, stupid."

Writes Errol Louis, in "The Memes Have Been Great. Now Kamala Harris Needs to Talk About This" (New York Magazine).

6 quotes from today's oral argument in Trump v. United States.

I listened live and took some handwritten notes, so I could find various things in the transcript. Here are the 6 quotes that made the cut for me. All but one are from the Justices.

1. Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer, encourages the Court to see far beyond Trump to the true horror of criminally prosecuting ex-Presidents:

The implications of the Court's decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case. Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for... allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq? Could President Obama be charged with murder for killing U.S. citizens abroad by drone strike? Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies?

2. In a similar vein, from Justice Alito:

So what about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II? Couldn't that have been charged under 18 U.S.C. 241, conspiracy against civil rights?

3. Justice Gorsuch makes a brilliant suggestion. If Presidents didn't have immunity from prosecution, they could give themselves the equivalent by pardoning themselves on the way out. And note the reminder that Obama could be on the hook for those drone strike murders:

"Never before had an alliance been conducted in so personal a fashion: two aristocrats, both gifted amateurs exuding..."

"... a sense of having been born to rule, shared their thoughts and actions, pleasures and worries, badinage and anger, with the sovereign self-confidence which came naturally to both as they juggled with the fates of a score of nations."

From a 1977 review of "2 books with nearly identical titles" — "Roosevelt and Churchill 1939-1941: The Partnership That Saved the West" and "Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence."

I encountered that in The New York Review of Books this morning as I was indulging in The Althouse Review of Badinage. 

Do we have anyone like that today — a gifted amateur exuding a sense of having been born to rule, capable of sharing their thoughts and actions, pleasures and worries, badinage and anger, with a sovereign self-confidence that comes naturally?

"You can't beat something with nothing," the wingless plane, and the deleterious effects of athletic awards for girls.

I was researching the saying "You can't beat something with nothing" — I wanted to critique the Biden campaign strategy — and I came up with this wonderful page from the New York Times archive.

It's page 17, from November 10, 1934, just after the Democrats' massive victory in the midterm elections:

In the upper right corner, you see Will Rogers, saying that "the Republicans lost because they had nothing to offer but criticism" — "No plan, denounce, but don't suggest." But Will Rogers didn't invent "You can't beat something with nothing." Even back then, it was an "old saying."

X is bad and we're not X ≠ a winning strategy.

"It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years."

Writes Jim Tankersley in "Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill/A plan for the economy, education, immigration, climate and more binds disparate Democratic lawmakers, but the proposal risks sinking under its own weight" (NYT). 

If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.... Republicans say the breadth of the bill shows that Democrats are trying to drastically shift national policy without full debate on individual proposals.... 

Ted Kaufman, a longtime aide to Mr. Biden who helped lead his presidential transition team, said the core of the bill went back much further: to a set of newsprint brochures that campaign volunteers delivered across Delaware in 1972, when Mr. Biden won an upset victory for a Senate seat.... 

Margie Omero, a principal at the Democratic polling firm GBAO, which has polled on the bill for progressive groups, said the ambition of the package was a selling point that Democrats should press as a contrast with Republicans in midterm elections. “People feel like the country is going through a lot of crises, and that we need to take action,” she said....

You know the old saying: Do something, everything. Including whatever was in those 1972 Delaware newsprint brochures. Come on, man! Biden's waited half a century to do whatever it was he claimed he wanted to do when he was 30. We've got to just do it in one fell swoop or none of it will ever get done. It's all or nothing. Take it or leave it. Don't you love it when your options are presented to you so clearly?

“This is our moment to prove to the American people that their government works for them, not just for the big corporations and those at the very top,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday. He added, “This is an opportunity to be the nation we know we can be.”

I'll accept his assurances if he'll explain what's in the bill and proves that he knows what he's talking about. And what is "the nation we know we can be"? Other than the one that is governed by people who support what they don't even begin to understand, because why not just combine everything into one inscrutable package? Actually, I do know we can be that, and it scares me.

By the way, it was only last April that I blogged a NYT article with this passage:

Invoking the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Biden unveiled a $1.8 trillion social spending plan to accompany previous proposals to build roads and bridges, expand other social programs and combat climate change, representing a fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The Times used the same comparison to LBJ and FDR and it was only $1.8 trillion. It's $3.5 trillion now! Who knew you could equal the Great Society or the New Deal spending a mere half of what they're proposing now? This new thing is like the Great Society PLUS the New Deal. 

"It may be true that the Biden administration concluded we are defenseless to cyber terrorism despite years of ransomware attacks and hundreds of billions of dollars in cyber security programs."

"If that is the case, the public should be informed. The failure of Congress and our government to defend against such terror attacks is a national security failure of breathtaking proportions. The Colonial Pipeline attack was the cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor. In both cases, we were caught unprepared and unable to deal with a threat we knew was coming. Yet, President Roosevelt did not issue a 'no comment' on the critical facts after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Back then, we believed FDR when he stated in his first inauguration that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' What the Biden administration seems to fear most is public recognition that it is afraid — afraid of the vulnerability of our infrastructure, afraid that the public will learn what cyber terrorists already know."

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Why the White House won't define pipeline attack as terrorism" (The Hill).

One way to fight — fake fight — terrorism is to withhold the label "terrorism" from the things you can't (or won't) fight. But it might be that the administration is doing what it can to fight what it realizes is terrorism, and what it's saying to us is simply propaganda. There's nothing we can do to help, and our fear of these attacks only makes matters worse. In that light, "no comment" is the mildest possible propaganda. There's nothing even to be deluded by. 

Why does Turley bring up the ancient propaganda "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?! Calling something that we can't fight "terrorism" would be an effort to increase fear. It's simply wrong to say the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and it always was. If quelling fear is the only problem, then "no comment" is an admirable response.

Harvard lawprof Noah Feldman answers no to the question "Does the Supreme Court really need reform?"

"It’s worth remembering that the undoubtedly conservative Supreme Court that has existed over the last 30 years give us [sic] gay rights, gay marriage, and now statutory protection for the rights of trans people. The same court has chipped away at affirmative action, but has not (yet) eliminated it. Ditto for abortion rights. Yes, it eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, but in a way Congress could repair if it so chose. In fact, in the almost 90 years since Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president, the Supreme Court has been better for liberals than for conservatives. That could change, to be sure. But Democrats need to think hard about the dangers of changing a Supreme Court that has, in many instances, advanced the causes of equality and justice even when most of its members were self-described conservatives appointed by Republicans."

That's at Bloomberg.

It's also worth remembering that gay rights and gay marriage — along with trans rights — could have been given through statutory law and that the Supreme Court rules on a far wider array of issues than the conspicuous gay rights and abortion issues that Feldman forefronts in this effort to ward off Court reform. If the Supreme Court had not decided that abortion is a constitutional right, we would have fought over it in legislatures and, in all likelihood, it would be at least as available today as it is, probably less threatened, and it would not be such a huge factor in presidential elections and judicial appointments. 

But these are the issues that vast numbers of Americans want to think about, so it's not surprising that Feldman concentrates on them as he tries to convince liberals not to mess with the structure of the Supreme Court.

We have nothing to fear but... Be afraid!! Be very afraid!!!

I'm completely jaded about the highly polarized blabbing about Trump's "Don't let it dominate you, don't be afraid of it" speech:



I don't think people actually disagree about anything here. The virus is dangerous, and we need to do what we can to navigate the risks but we also must balance other considerations — such as the mental and economic wellbeing of the nation and the need for children to play and learn. We should be smart and rational and make good decisions given the information and expertise that is currently available.

But the election is breathing heavily down our neck, breathing more heavily than sick/not sick Donald Trump having gamely climbed a big flight of stairs and positioned himself on the balcony to tell us he's doing just fine. So the various commentators are acting as though we're at polar opposites.

Trump's opponents had to counter his "Don't let it dominate you, don't be afraid of it" with accusations that he was saying the virus isn't even a problem at all and you shouldn't take any precautions. But are they saying be very afraid and let it dominate you? No, they are not. The disagreement is bullshit. There's just some variation in how cautious you need to be or how much you ought to display cautiousness.

You know, a lot of people are talking about karma — because Trump didn't take enough care, he was sanguine, and then he got what was coming. So let me quote you a line from John Lennon's "Instant Karma": "Why in the world are we here?/Surely not to live in pain and fear?"

"This is the moment for a Rooseveltian approach to the U.K. The country has gone through a profound shock. But in those moments, you have the opportunity to change, and to do things better."

Said Boris Johnson, quoted in "A Surprising Role Model Emerges for Boris Johnson: F.D.R./The British prime minister, trying to regroup in the coronavirus pandemic, wants to bury Thatcherism and embark on a program of ambitious public works" (NYT).

Mr. Johnson is a Conservative populist who ran on a platform of pulling Britain out of the European Union and had, until now, modeled himself on Roosevelt’s wartime ally, Winston Churchill....

One of [Johnson's] closest advisers, Michael Gove, recently [said]... “Roosevelt recognized that, faced with a crisis that had shaken faith in government, it was not simply a change of personnel and rhetoric that was required, but a change in structure, ambition, and organization”....

“F.D.R. was someone who had an extraordinary intuitive feel for where the public was and what the mood of the country was,” said Robert Dallek, an American presidential historian who published a biography of Roosevelt in 2017. “Does someone like Boris Johnson have that?”

From The Guardian, "Absolutely fanciful': Boris Johnson's new deal not Rooseveltian, say critics/The PM wants to be put on the same pedestal as Franklin D Roosevelt as he unveils £5bn capital projects":

“The notion that he’s going to turn himself into FDR seems absolutely fanciful,” said professor Anand Menon, of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. “FDR surrounded himself with experts, and drew on what they had to say, in a way that Boris Johnson so far has not.”

By the way, I'd avoid the figure of speech, "put on a pedestal." Things on pedestals are not doing well at the moment. They seem to be asking for a toppling.

But here in America, we don't put Franklin Roosevelt on a pedestal. Look, his statue is firmly planted on the ground, and he is seated in a wheelchair...



... not lording it over us at all.

"When you hear someone demanding inchoate generalized 'freedom,' ask whether he cares at all that millions of workers..."

"... who clean the zoos and buff the nails and intubate the grandmas are not free. These people are cannon fodder for your liberty. The long-standing tension between individual liberty and the collective good is complicated, and and as Kendi is quick to point out, the balance often tilts, trade-offs are made, federal and state governments shift clumsily along together, and the balance tilts again. Nobody denies that individual liberty is essential in a democracy, but in addition to parsing whether we as a collective do better in providing the 'freedom from' while also offering some 'freedom to,' it’s worth asking whether those making zero-sum claims about liberty are willing to sacrifice anything for freedom, or are just happily sacrificing you."

From "Whose Freedom Counts?/Anti-lockdown protesters are twisting the idea of liberty" by Dahlia Lithwick (at Slate).

Kendi is Ibram X. Kendi who has an article in The Atlantic called "We’re Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic/The pandemic has brought the latest battle in the long American war over communal well-being." Lithwick instructs us that there is "a long-standing difference between core notions of what he calls freedom to and freedom from."

Lithwick's phrasing is confusing. It's "long-standing," so it's not as though Kendi invented the distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom to." Two out of 4 of FDR's "Four Freedoms" were "freedom from" (from want and from fear).  I remember an early interview with Barack Obama, in which he observed that Americans think too much about "freedom to" and not enough about "freedom from."

Lithwick writes:

The freedom to harm, [Kendi] points out, has its lineage in the slaveholder’s constitutional notion of freedom: “Slaveholders disavowed a state that secured any form of communal freedom—the freedom of the community from slavery, from disenfranchisement, from exploitation, from poverty, from all the demeaning and silencing and killing.” Kendi continues by pointing out that these two notions of freedom have long rubbed along uneasily side by side, but that those demanding that states “open up” so they may shop, or visit zoos, are peeling back the tension between the two....

How do you "peel back" "tension"? I had that image of 2 notions rubbing along uneasily side by side for a long time, and then these people who want to shop are "peeling back the tension." That kind of vaguely titillating metaphor is unfair to the reader. I'm seeing 2 notions in bed with each other and the would-be shoppers bursting in and ripping back the sheets. Aha! We see what you're doing! What a distraction! But I suppose that because slavery was invoked, I'm expected to listen without protest while Kendi's solemn, censorious lecture is promoted by an over-excited Lithwick. I resist. Sorry. I do hear what you're saying, and I see how well it works to justify depriving us of all freedom. There's never enough freedom from all the things in the world that might hurt us if we're not kept in eternal lockdown.