“There oughtta be a law” is a common saying that has always grated on the nerves of conservatives. It’s a knee-jerk reaction by people who think that good things must be mandated and that bad things should be prohibited.
It’s a big-government mindset that rejects both the ideas of individual liberty and personal responsibility. It puts the state in the place of the conscience, in the place of parents, and in the place of community. It substitutes legislation for norms and moral teachings. And it leads to attitudes such as the Clinton-Gore administration’s stance that if they don’t get indicted for it, it’s OK.
Conservatives are supposed to believe that some things are right or wrong regardless of what the government says because morality springs from natural law. God is the controlling authority. Human nature doesn’t swing with the same tides as human opinion.
Yet in the President Trump era, there’s been a depressing shift in conservative thought. If Trump is legally allowed to do something, it’s obviously OK for him to do it. If he has the legal authority to pursue his own self-interest, nobody ought to criticize him for doing so.
Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence is the latest example. Trump has consistently made it clear that he values loyalty to Trump above all else. He has repeatedly dangled pardons publicly and then handed them out to convicted criminals who showed loyalty to him. Stone was convicted of breaking the law in order to protect Trump’s reputation, and Trump commuted his sentence.
This is what you would do if you wanted to convey the message, “I will make sure nobody goes to jail for any illegal action done in my favor.”
Even if that’s not Trump’s intention, his actions create that environment.
After the clemency was announced, I asked this question on Twitter:
How is this grant of clemency NOT corruption?
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) July 11, 2020
Some Trump supporters gave a substantive answer, arguing that the corruption of the underlying Russia investigation made Stone’s prosecution illegitimate or pointing to the biased jury. Fine. But a depressing number gave an answer like this:
United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2. https://t.co/pOj4na6pNt
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) July 11, 2020
That tweet by Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Trump, refers to the part of the Constitution that lists the president’s powers. Specifically, that “he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
But think about that argument. In effect, she’s asserting that if the president can legally do it, it’s not corrupt. The more general statement is that everything that’s legal is OK. This implies the contrapositive, that things are only immoral if they’re illegal. This is very much not a conservative opinion.
When I pointed out the corrupt nature of Trump enriching himself by spending party money and taxpayer money at his own resorts, I got plenty of responses along the lines of, “Show me the law this violates.” The conflict of interest presented by his owning these properties is immense, but his defenders say, “It’s not covered by conflict-of-interest law!”
This is one of the many reasons I suspect that Trump, despite his excellent court appointments and his defense of religious liberty, could end up being a net negative for conservatives and thus the country: He is corroding the intellectual foundation of conservatism. The Right is being habituated to the sort of will-to-power ethics that the radical Left thrives on. That’s destructive in the long run.
