{"id":29789,"date":"2016-07-22T11:41:14","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=29789"},"modified":"2016-07-22T12:02:36","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T16:02:36","slug":"trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I\u00a0have not seen widely examined\u00a0is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn\u2019t going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed.<\/p>\n

Here is a segment from the transcript<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

SANGER:\u00a0Erdogan put nearly 50,000 people in jail or suspend them, suspended thousands of teachers, he imprisoned many in the military and the police, he dismissed a lot of the judiciary. Does this worry you? And would you rather deal with a strongman who\u2019s also been a strong ally, or with somebody that\u2019s got a greater appreciation of civil liberties than Mr. Erdogan has? Would you press him to make sure the rule of law applies?<\/p>\n

TRUMP:\u00a0I think right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a lot of problems, and I think it\u2019s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don\u2019t know what we are doing and we can\u2019t see straight in our own country. We have tremendous problems when you have policemen being shot in the streets, when you have riots, when you have Ferguson. When you have Baltimore. When you have all of the things that are happening in this country \u2014 we have other problems, and I think we have to focus on those problems. When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re a very good messenger.<\/p>\n

SANGER:\u00a0So that suggests that you would not, as, say, President Bush did, the last President Bush, make the spread of democracy and liberty sort of a core of your foreign policy. You would say, \u201cWe need allies, we\u2019re not going to lecture them about what they do inside their borders.\u201d<\/p>\n

TRUMP:\u00a0We need allies.<\/p>\n

SANGER:\u00a0And lecture inside their borders?<\/p>\n

TRUMP:\u00a0I don\u2019t know that we have a right to lecture. Just look about what\u2019s happening with our country. How are we going to lecture when people are shooting our policemen in cold blood. How are we going to lecture when you see the riots and the horror going on in our own country. We have so many difficulties in our country right now that I don\u2019t think we should be, and there may be a time when we can get much more aggressive on that subject, and it will be a wonderful thing to be more aggressive. We\u2019re not in a position to be more aggressive. We have to fix our own mess.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

President Erdogan of Turkey has suspended civil liberties<\/a> in that country in ways that are\u00a0deeply concerning. His government has fired thousands\u00a0of judges and teachers<\/a>\u00a0with little justification. Erdogan claims his government is responding to last week\u2019s military coup attempt, but at this point it looks more like Erdogan is using the failed coup as an attempt to purge his political opponents and consolidate his power in dictator-like fashion. That is the context for this line of questioning.<\/p>\n

When asked if he is concerned about the violations of civil liberties in Turkey, Trump responds by saying that we have problems with civil liberties in our own country. And he\u2019s right. We do have problems with civil liberties in our own country. Civil liberties include a range of freedoms we have as citizens, guaranteed by our\u00a0government\u2014things like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial and due process, and so forth. That black people are pulled over at a higher rate<\/a> than white people, that they are given longer prison terms<\/a> for the same crimes\u2014these are civil liberties violations. This, of course, is not actually what Trump is talking about.<\/p>\n

There is some truth to Trump\u2019s point that it is difficult to lecture other countries about violations of civil liberties when our country doesn\u2019t itself meet the\u00a0standard it promotes. We saw this during the Cold War, when we positioned ourself as a bastion of freedom and democracy while our nation\u2019s African American population lived under repressive Jim Crow laws and customs and was largely disenfranchised and denied the right to vote. In fact, our inability to meet our own proclaimed standard became a talking point used by\u00a0the USSR even before<\/em> the advent of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Communist criticism of Jim Crow, and the problem Jim Crow soon became for U.S. efforts to lead the \u201cfree\u201d world, played a significant role in the successes of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Realizing\u00a0that blatant violations of civil rights and civil liberties made the U.S. look bad abroad and undercut U.S. efforts to promote freedom and democracy\u2014especially as\u00a0images of African American children<\/a> attacked by police dogs<\/a>, blasted with water cannons<\/a>, and then arrested en masse<\/a> circulated globally\u2014the American government took steps to correct the problem and restore the United States\u2019 image abroad.<\/p>\n

But this is not, of course, what Trump is suggesting. Look up at his statements again. He claims\u2014and I\u2019m not making this up\u2014that \u201cpolicemen being shot in the streets\u201d and \u201criots\u201d are civil liberties problems<\/em>. Tut that is not<\/em> how this works. Governments<\/em> violate civil liberties. Individual citizens<\/em> do not violate civil liberties. I can only conclude that Trump does not know what civil liberties are.<\/strong> I\u2019m completely serious. And you know what? That should be\u00a0scary to the extreme<\/em>. This would have been akin to JFK claiming that\u00a0it was the civil rights movement<\/em> that was violating civil liberties and making the U.S. look bad abroad, not\u00a0Jim Crow and police violence<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here, let me give you a graph:<\/p>\n

\"Civil<\/p>\n

I am not condoning either the shooting of police officers or riots. There were riots in the mid to late 1960s too, riots far worse than anything we have experienced today, and there was anti-police violence, too. These things are not good things, and are often symptoms of larger problems that need to be solved\u2014problems people have despaired of solving peacefully. We need to both\u00a0the underlying problems that result in riots or anti-police violence and hold people accountable for their actions.<\/p>\n

Riots and anti-police violence, though, are still not civil liberties violations<\/em>. Only governments<\/em>\u00a0can commit civil liberties violations.\u00a0That Trump\u00a0thinks private citizens can commit civil liberties violations\u2014that he would refrain from calling out civil liberties violations in other countries because two African American veterans shot and killed eight police officers, or because black youths in Baltimore through rocks at the police\u2014this is utterly unprecedented and completely terrifying. These are\u2014or at least should<\/em> be\u2014two completely separate categories.<\/p>\n

I also don\u2019t trust Trump to tell the difference between peaceful protests and violent protests, given his penchant for calling<\/a> peaceful protesters at his rallies\u00a0last spring violent with no justification, and his overall rhetoric<\/a> about protestors. At his rallies, Trump made a habit of encouraging his supporters to attack and otherwise physically harm the protestors. \u201cI\u2019d like to punch him in the face,\u201d Trump said of one protestor<\/a>, before adding that \u201cmaybe he should have been roughed up\u201d and that in \u201cthe old days\u201d protesters like him would have been \u201ccarried out on a stretcher.\u201d Given all of this, I am concerned that Trump is including the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore when he speaks of riots there. The right of the people to peacefully protest is one of the must fundamental rights of a democracy, and is generally one of the first civil liberties to go.<\/p>\n

In reality\u2014a place Trump does not appear to inhabit\u2014it is the racial bias in our nation\u2019s policing and criminal justice system\u2014along with our use of torture, our extralegal detention of suspected terrorists, and the number of people we have behind bars\u00a0in our nations\u2019 prison systems\u2014that harm to our efforts to promote freedom and democracy abroad. Also\u00a0in reality, Trump has himself pledged to suspend civil liberties.\u00a0Trump has stated that he wants to abridge the freedom of the press by broadening libel laws<\/a>.\u00a0Trump wants to bring back torture<\/a>, and has promised to violate international human rights agreements by targeting terrorists\u2019 families<\/a>.\u00a0Trump explicitly softened the Republican Party\u2019s platform to make it go easier on Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin<\/a>, who is well known for violating civil liberties.<\/p>\n

I know that people often\u00a0treat the particular election they\u2019re facing as the most important election of all time, but there is something truly\u00a0different going on this year\u2014and some\u00a0have more to lose than others. Hispanics face profiling and hateful rhetoric and the possibility that the undocumented among them may be deported. Muslims face much of the same. African Americans\u00a0face Trump\u2019s complete antagonism toward police reform, among other things. As an upper middle class white woman, though, I had thought that what I was primarily fighting was the threat Trump posed to others. Today, though, that no longer feels as true, because if Trump does not know what civil liberties are\u2014if Trump believes private citizens can commit civil liberties violations\u2014no one is truly safe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I have a <\/b>Patreon<\/b><\/a>! Please support my writing!<\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn’t going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. <\/p>\n

Click through to read more! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":29791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[568],"class_list":["post-29789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-donald-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn't going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. Click through to read more!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn't going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. Click through to read more!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-07-22T15:41:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-07-22T16:02:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2016\/07\/ss-140812-ferguson-121.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"512\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html\",\"name\":\"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-07-22T15:41:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-22T16:02:36+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn't going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. Click through to read more!\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. College turned her world upside down, and she is today an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive. She blogs about leaving religion, her experience with the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, the detrimental effects of the \\\"purity culture,\\\" the contradictions of conservative politics, and the importance of feminism.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/author\/libby\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying","description":"The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn't going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. Click through to read more!","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying","og_description":"The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn't going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. Click through to read more!","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html","og_site_name":"Love, Joy, Feminism","article_published_time":"2016-07-22T15:41:14+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-07-22T16:02:36+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":512,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2016\/07\/ss-140812-ferguson-121.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Libby Anne","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Libby Anne","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html","name":"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-07-22T15:41:14+00:00","dateModified":"2016-07-22T16:02:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2"},"description":"The interview in which Donald Trump stated that, under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would not necessarily fulfill its NATO obligations has been discussed at length. What I have not seen widely examined is what that interview says about how Trump views civil liberties. This isn't going to be pretty, but it desperately needs to be discussed. Click through to read more!","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/trump-does-not-know-what-civil-liberties-are-and-that-should-be-terrifying.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Trump Does Not Know What Civil Liberties Are, and That Should Be Terrifying"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/","name":"Love, Joy, Feminism","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2","name":"Libby Anne","description":"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. College turned her world upside down, and she is today an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive. She blogs about leaving religion, her experience with the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, the detrimental effects of the \"purity culture,\" the contradictions of conservative politics, and the importance of feminism.","sameAs":["http:\/\/patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/author\/libby"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}