The rise of American authoritarianism

[Valmy]

Where in the Constitution is someone given the power to suspend habeas corpus?

Article One, Section 9 of course. Which was justification for the claim only Congress could do it in the first place.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

But of course that section is about stuff Congress cannot do, it does not say who can require it in cases of rebellion or invasion. And since Congress is sometimes not in session it seemed logical the Executive could therefore require it.

[Admiral Yi]

Learn something new every day.

[viper37]

the problem here is a misunderstanding. viper's "harmless" isn't literal

yes.  So simple to understand, when you try.

[grumbler]

the problem here is a misunderstanding. viper's "harmless" isn't literal

yes.  So simple to understand, when you try.

And since you don't literally mean it is simple to understand, what you are really saying here is that it is impossible to understand, even when you try.  Got it.

This is fun!  You literally dig your hole deeper each time you post.

[CountDeMoney]

I dunno, maybe I missed this posted earlier, but--

February 27, 2016, 10:33 pm
Trump tells Christie: 'Get on the plane and go home'
By Caitlin Yilek
The Hill

Donald Trump told Chris Christie to "go home" after the New Jersey governor introduced the billionaire at a campaign rally in Arkansas on Saturday.
"Get on the plane and go home," Trump is heard saying to Christie.
Christie arrived at the rally with Trump via the real estate mogul's plane. The two exited the plane in front of a crowd and then Christie introduced Trump.
After the short introduction, the two shook hands while Trump leaned in to say something unintelligible. Then, Trump can be heard telling Christie to get on the plane.
Christie endorsed Trump earlier this week.

https://vine.co/v/i60YubamjY5

[Valmy]

So he wants Christie to stump for him in New Jersey?

Granted that primary is not for months. Which frankly makes me almost physically ill I am so damn tired of this election. But then I feel like that for every Presidential election.

[garbon]

So he wants Christie to stump for him in New Jersey?

Granted that primary is not for months. Which frankly makes me almost physically ill I am so damn tired of this election. But then I feel like that for every Presidential election.

What Seeds posted is from before we saw Christie held hostage in Florida.

[Siege]

The selective application of freedom of speech is no freedom at all.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump is Buzz Windrip made flesh.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-how-fascism-comes-to-america/2016/05/17/c4e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html

This is how fascism comes to America

Robert Kagan
Opinions May 18

The Republican Party's attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party's "conservative" principles, all would be well.

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.


And the source of allegiance? We're supposed to believe that Trump's support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of "others" — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.

That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as anyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous.


Republican politicians marvel at how he has "tapped into" a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the "mobocracy." Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty. But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.

This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called "fascism." Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. "National socialism" was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.

To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today. These movements play on all the fears, vanities, ambitions and insecurities that make up the human psyche. In democracies, at least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they want — vox populi vox Dei. A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn't matter how popular or admired that person has been. He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party's most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death.

In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader's incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won't let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin's show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway.


RNC chairman: Republicans will find common ground with Trump 
Play Video0:56
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and the GOP will find common ground ahead of the general election. (Reuters)
A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don't alienate the leader's mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to be brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let's shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins.

What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will likely comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac "tapping into" popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

[The Minsky Moment]

The selective application of freedom of speech is no freedom at all.

"We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected"   

--Donald Trump

[grumbler]

I used the Kagan piece in my AP World history class today as an exercise in finding logical fallacies.  It went very well.  Thanks for sharing it.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

[Article One, Section 9 of course. Which was justification for the claim only Congress could do it in the first place.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

But of course that section is about stuff Congress cannot do, it does not say who can require it in cases of rebellion or invasion. And since Congress is sometimes not in session it seemed logical the Executive could therefore require it.

Guess that depends on your interpretation of the separation of powers.  Arguably suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus is making law, and thus by some interpretations not something the Executive is ever allowed to do without specific permission from Congress.

[The Minsky Moment]

Guess that depends on your interpretation of the separation of powers.  Arguably suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus is making law, and thus by some interpretations not something the Executive is ever allowed to do without specific permission from Congress.

That was Taney's ruling in Ex Parte Merryman, but for reasons that can be debated, he made that decision on his own sitting as circuit judge for Maryland instead of taking it to the Supreme Court, where it might very well have gone a different way.  The AG then circulated a memorandum opinion disagreeing with Taney's reasoning, and it never got up to the Supreme Court because Congress went and passed a suspension act, rendering the issue moot going forward.

Taney's view makes a certain amount of sense as a constitutional reading from the structure of the text (the Suspension Clause is contained in Art 1 not 2) but not so much from a practical common sense perspective.

[CountDeMoney]

I used the Kagan piece in my AP World history class today as an exercise in finding logical fallacies.  It went very well.  Thanks for sharing it.

How many were there?

[Capetan Mihali]

As a ...student... of fascism, I was pretty darn offended by his line that "Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society." That's demonstrably untrue, if not a logical fallacy.