{"id":108809,"date":"2025-01-23T12:29:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T19:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=108809"},"modified":"2025-01-26T00:03:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-26T07:03:15","slug":"as-political-a-blog-entry-as-youll-see-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/01\/as-political-a-blog-entry-as-youll-see-here.html","title":{"rendered":"As political a blog entry as you’ll see here"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Capitol of the United States of America \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the past several years, I\u2019ve refrained from posting entries here on political issues. \u00a0I\u2019ve done so because, although I\u2019ve 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. \u00a0And, given my role with the Foundation, and my commitment to its flourishing, I\u2019ve felt it my obligation to rein in expressions of my personal politics.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0I have never voted for him. \u00a0I did not vote for him in the most recent presidential election. \u00a0(For the record, I also didn\u2019t vote for Kamala Harris.) \u00a0Had 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. \u00a0Under the circumstances, though, I was free to cast a protest vote, effectively (and decisively), for \u201cnone of the above.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve described myself as a very serious life-long political conservative \u2014 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. \u00a0I have mentioned on several occasions, half seriously, that I cast my first presidential vote in 1964, for Senator Barry Goldwater. \u00a0My 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. \u00a0I\u2019ve mentioned that I\u2019ve subscribed to National Review<\/em> 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<\/em>) and while living in Cairo, where the magazines wouldn\u2019t have survived the Egyptian postal service. \u00a0Two 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. \u00a0I\u2019ve been delighted, in recent years, to have participated multiple times as an invited speaker at the annual libertarian FreedomFest<\/a> (although I probably won\u2019t be able to make it this summer).<\/p>\n

I share these things here again in order to establish my bona fides<\/em> as a genuine conservative. \u00a0I\u2019ve also explained, however, that my conservatism is not merely about public policy. \u00a0It\u2019s also about public behavior, about decorum, about civility, about respect for others and for traditions (I really disapprove of Senator John Fetterman, whom I\u2019ve 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 \u2014 including orderly transfers of power; I regard the 6 January 2021 assault on the United States Capitol as a shameful national disgrace \u2014 and to the rule of law).<\/p>\n

So what do I think about the first few days of the new Trump administration? \u00a0My feelings are profoundly mixed. \u00a0I won\u2019t get into details \u2014 I\u2019m really intent on not turning this into a political blog \u2014 but I will say this: I like some of what he seems to be doing. \u00a0I strongly dislike many other things. \u00a0In fact, some things that he\u2019s doing horrify me. \u00a0Many of his cabinet nominations seem to me very worrisome. \u00a0And 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. \u00a0The pardon power has been abused. \u00a0And 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. \u00a0I disfavor such decrees even when they do things that I would like<\/em> to be done. \u00a0I\u2019ve quoted this passage from Robert Bolt\u2019s A Man for All Seasons<\/em> more than once here:<\/p>\n

\u201cWilliam Roper: \u201cSo, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Thomas More: \u201cYes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?\u201d<\/p>\n

William Roper: \u201cYes, I\u2019d cut down every law in England to do that!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Thomas More: \u201cOh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned \u2019round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man\u2019s laws, not God\u2019s! And if you cut them down, and you\u2019re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I\u2019d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety\u2019s sake!\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For what little remains of this blog entry, though, my focus is on the demands that I\u2019ve seen in some quarters that the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> publicly denounce some of Mr. Trump\u2019s enactments. \u00a0(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. \u00a0But it may not. \u00a0Their stance of political neutrality is no mere pose.)<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0But ancient Israel was a theocratic monarchy, not a secular constitutional republic as are the United States of America. \u00a0We have a principle of the separation of church and state that, although not strictly present in the Constitution, has served us reasonably well. \u00a0Breaching that separation is a serious matter, on either side. \u00a0Moreover, ancient Hebrew religion was associated essentially with one political unit; the Church is international. \u00a0And John the Baptist had little if anything to say about Herod\u2019s fiscal policy or his views of immigration; John denounced Herod\u2019s personal immorality. \u00a0Comparing the Church\u2019s relationship to the United States with John\u2019s relationship to ancient Judea is an apples-to-oranges \u00a0comparison if ever there was one. \u00a0Moreover, 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\u2019s involvement with California\u2019s Proposition 8. \u00a0Some of them already complain, falsely, that Utah is a theocratic church-state. \u00a0They don\u2019t really favor the Church \u201cinterfering\u201d with political matters; overwhelmingly, they would be deeply unhappy if it did<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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