Hello all! Another fine day and another fine post from Stephen Hall! Make today a good one!
A couple recent tweeted positions by ardent Trump supporter Bill Mitchell in part where he carries water for a non-conservative Trump position and another where he concedes liberal strongholds like Portland to the likes of Antifa started me thinking about the concept of conceding.
Perhaps not in the way you are now imagining.
The leftist push for a novel approach to gun control, as it often does, threw out some vague sound-byte slogan in the wake of a couple highly publicized shootings, followed immediately by some manipulative polls before any real details of the idea could be vetted, invariably showing a high public support and a president appearing to endorse the seemingly hastily contrived idea.
This, of course, would be the “red flag laws”, which sound so similar to proposals conservatives have actually put forth to restrict gun possession from those adjudicated mentally dangerous, but gleefully skipping that whole annoying adjudication process.
The devil is in the details, as they say, regarding potential legislation. A good reason in and of itself to never be hasty with new legislation. The “red flag” laws set up a very dangerous confiscation scheme in reverse order where a person is deemed upon another person’s word to be potentially dangerous without ever having notice of the decision much less their day in court, placing both the person “red flagged” and the police in unnecessary and unwarranted danger.
The foolishness and unconstitutionality of such laws is not the topic of this post, merely an example of how persons ostensibly on the political right can so easily be swayed into supporting a piece of legislation which they would not normally support.
The effect for Mr. Mitchell is two fold, the first being that it was initially supported by President Trump, and Mr. Mitchell supports 100% anything that Trump supports, an ill reason for supporting legislation. (President Trump’s support of such measure coming as a shock to no one given that he has never really been a strong 2nd Amendment supporter, but he seems to have lost interest in the legislation as quickly as he supported it.)
The second affecting more than just the ardent political supporters that a quasi-conservative sounding legislation which is in reality a leftist Trojan Horse. Partly that comes from a coordinated timing of the introduction of such measures riding the coat tails of public tragedy; partly it comes from the connections made by conservatives themselves with such tragedies and mental illness; and partly from deceptive push polling which avoids details of such legislation.
It is the reaction of people like Mr. Mitchell in justifying his support for such measures and his berating of those who disagree and oppose such hasty measures based upon such polling which is most concerning. The sudden popularity of such legislation itself was used as a reason to support the legislation rather than the actual merits and function of the proposed law.
Let’s take the idea out of its context.
Imagine a new proposed law, the “Feel Good Law”, proposed to fix the highly public Media Problem, which “polls” popularly with both parties from 70 and 90% support respectively, as reported by the same media spotlighting the problem.
However, the reason given to support and pass the “Feel Good Law” is the popularity of the proposed law itself, after all rejecting such an overwhelmingly popular law will hurt the party in power in the upcoming election.
This is not legislating, this is the political pandering of populism, the idea that simply because something is popular then it should be enacted as law. Whether it is wise or foolish is of no concern to anyone because politics is merely a game of popularity having nothing to do with actual statecraft.
Are you comfortable with “Feel Good Law”? You don’t even know what it does. In the short time it is being pushed to pass, neither do the legislators voting on the measure. That should make you feel even worse. But, hey, at least its popular, so your party will not lose ground in the next election to those other guys.
Lest you think this a partisan pitch, that was exactly how Obamacare was passed. So quickly that Nancy Pelosi was on the floor of the House telling member they would have to pass the law in order to find out what was in it because they could not slow down the process long enough for members to actually read the bill they were enacting.
Now, I turn to the other notion also advanced by Mr. Mitchell that he could not understand why any conservative group would hold a rally in Portland, Oregon, and face the inevitable violence of leftist terrorists like Antifa in a city where the mayor’s office fully supports and backs the Antifa thugs unless they were just looking for a fight.
His solution is simply to concede places like Portland to leftists, to withdraw and politically abandon leftist strongholds in the face of such orchestrated violence. An interesting proposition, it being possible that such leftist enclaves will collapse in upon themselves and not spill out both their ideology and their violent tactics to neighboring communities and states.
However, Colorado and Texas have experienced the spillover from Californians relocating to their states, thus I am less inclined than Mr. Mitchell to leave such leftist enclaves to their own devices to fester and infect others. Given how difficult it has been politically to build a border wall, how are we supposed to be comfortable with the idea of building walls around places like Portland.
Violent leftist enclaves like Chicago have no problem blaming their gun crime on the neighboring state of Indiana. I can’t imagine that Portland will not find a way to blame their problems on other people as well.
Both of these situations are examples of what one might call a “strategic retreat”, to concede ground to the enemy in an effort to win the next election. However, what good does it really do to win the next election if you have already lost the political issue over which such elections are fought?
Do not imagine that I of all people oppose the concept of a strategic retreat, however, a proper strategic retreat must be strategic. That sounds kind of trite, but it is pertinent. The next election is not a strategy, it is mere survival for your politicians.
To play the military analogy, retreating may keep your soldiers alive for the moment, but you can end up losing the war. Military wars are ultimately based on the strategic advantages of a nation employing the resources of the nation to the best advantage of the nation. Political wars must employ the ideas and principles of a nation’s ideology to the best advancement of the nation and not merely a party.
If you concede a political issue strategically, then you must gain an advantage and advancement in the underlying principle. If you are not advancing your principles, yet you are conceding the political ground, then you’re being routed. You are losing.
In neither of these examples do I see a strategic political advantage to the types of concessions proposed by people like Bill Mitchell. Red Flag laws advance no principle of liberty, rather such laws concede that a person’s rights may be taken away without due process. Avoiding political rallies because of threats of violence, concedes that violent intimidation is now a valid tactic in American politics.
Where in these concessions is the advancement of liberty? That is not enough for a post, let me give the reader a theoretic example of such a strategic concession.
Suppose a state proposed raising their state income taxes but abolished property taxes even though it was a net tax increase on the citizens. On the principle that income may be taxed but not wealth, the elimination of wealth taxes would advance the principle even though one concedes to higher taxes.
That would be a strategic concession because though it would be a retreat on taxation, it places the party on a stronger intellectual footing on taxation principles.
