
For the past several years, I’ve refrained from posting entries here on political issues. I’ve done so because, although I’ve had a deep interest in politics since I was about ten years old, I found that my publicly expressing my political views created adverse consequences for the Interpreter Foundation. And, given my role with the Foundation, and my commitment to its flourishing, I’ve felt it my obligation to rein in expressions of my personal politics.
Still, those who have followed this blog with any degree of attention over the past few years are surely aware that I am not a fan of Donald J. Trump. I have never voted for him. I did not vote for him in the most recent presidential election. (For the record, I also didn’t vote for Kamala Harris.) Had there been any serious doubt about which presidential candidate would win the electoral votes of my adopted home state of Utah, I might have had to consider my own ballot more seriously. Under the circumstances, though, I was free to cast a protest vote, effectively (and decisively), for “none of the above.”
I’ve described myself as a very serious life-long political conservative — a person who believes in limited-government, strict originalist construction of the Constitution, federalism, free trade and free markets, and a strong defense, and who is both broadly sympathetic to libertarianism and socially conservative. I have mentioned on several occasions, half seriously, that I cast my first presidential vote in 1964, for Senator Barry Goldwater. My parents voted for Lyndon Johnson, but my older brother and I favored Senator Goldwater and he took me into the voting booth with him and allowed me, though far underage, to pull the lever. I’ve mentioned that I’ve subscribed to National Review since I was about thirteen or fourteen, with only a couple of gaps while on my mission in Switzerland (although, even there, I was receiving the magazine until a few months before my release, when my mission president asked us all to cancel our magazine subscriptions, which were, I think, mostly to Sports Illustrated) and while living in Cairo, where the magazines wouldn’t have survived the Egyptian postal service. Two of the most memorable experiences of my life were (a) helping to host William F. Buckley Jr. during his speaking visit to Brigham Young University while I was an undergraduate and (b) participating, by invitation, in the 1976 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in St. Andrews, Scotland, and a preceding tour of the United Kingdom, during which I was privileged to spend time with such titans of libertarian and free-market economics as Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Friedrich von Hayek, James Buchanan, Armen Alchian, the writer John Chamberlain, and Murray Rothbard. I’ve been delighted, in recent years, to have participated multiple times as an invited speaker at the annual libertarian FreedomFest (although I probably won’t be able to make it this summer).
I share these things here again in order to establish my bona fides as a genuine conservative. I’ve also explained, however, that my conservatism is not merely about public policy. It’s also about public behavior, about decorum, about civility, about respect for others and for traditions (I really disapprove of Senator John Fetterman, whom I’ve otherwise come to like just a bit, attending the presidential inauguration in sneakers, shorts, and a hoodie), and about republicanism (which, in my mind, entails a certain degree of resistance to populism, an abhorrence of demagoguery, and a strong commitment to individual rights as well as to public order — including orderly transfers of power; I regard the 6 January 2021 assault on the United States Capitol as a shameful national disgrace — and to the rule of law).
So what do I think about the first few days of the new Trump administration? My feelings are profoundly mixed. I won’t get into details — I’m really intent on not turning this into a political blog — but I will say this: I like some of what he seems to be doing. I strongly dislike many other things. In fact, some things that he’s doing horrify me. Many of his cabinet nominations seem to me very worrisome. And I strongly disapprove of the Imperial Presidency that we have seen on full display over the past few weeks in both the Biden administration and, now, the newly-arrived Trump regime. The pardon power has been abused. And the overuse of executive orders puts me more in mind of the divine right of kings than of the chief magistrate of a constitutional republic. I disfavor such decrees even when they do things that I would like to be done. I’ve quoted this passage from Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons more than once here:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
For what little remains of this blog entry, though, my focus is on the demands that I’ve seen in some quarters that the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publicly denounce some of Mr. Trump’s enactments. (It may eventually come to that, of course, if they feel that there is a moral issue or an issue of religious freedom that they simply must address. But it may not. Their stance of political neutrality is no mere pose.)
It has been suggested that, if they were truly prophets, they would denounce Trump as John the Baptist denounced Herod or as Isaiah denounced (and counseled) his royal Judahite contemporaries. But ancient Israel was a theocratic monarchy, not a secular constitutional republic as are the United States of America. We have a principle of the separation of church and state that, although not strictly present in the Constitution, has served us reasonably well. Breaching that separation is a serious matter, on either side. Moreover, ancient Hebrew religion was associated essentially with one political unit; the Church is international. And John the Baptist had little if anything to say about Herod’s fiscal policy or his views of immigration; John denounced Herod’s personal immorality. Comparing the Church’s relationship to the United States with John’s relationship to ancient Judea is an apples-to-oranges comparison if ever there was one. Moreover, lamentation over the failure, thus far, of Church leadership to speak out on political issues seems to me rather hypocritical: These critics are, for the most part, people who strongly disapproved of the Church’s involvement with California’s Proposition 8. Some of them already complain, falsely, that Utah is a theocratic church-state. They don’t really favor the Church “interfering” with political matters; overwhelmingly, they would be deeply unhappy if it did.