Politics

On March 23, 1775, a month before the first shots would ring out at Lexington and Concord, Patrick Henry entered Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia to deliver a bold conviction. “The war is actually begun,” he said, “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Henry’s rallying cry remains one of the most iconic speeches in American history and is one of my personal favorites. Indeed, multiple times since we moved to northern Virginia in 2021, my family and I have made the drive south to see Henry’s speech reenacted. The message remains as compelling as ever, and this year, on its 250th anniversary, I believe it is especially relevant to our current political moment. We are facing a struggle for ordered liberty.

When Donald Trump ordered the declassification of thousands of secret government documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it seemed like it would be a red-letter day for America’s conspiracy theorists. The reality has been quite different. The JFK files — along with other documents about the killings of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., which were released on Tuesday — have turned out to be a major disappointment. Around 2,000 documents were included in the release from the US National Archives and Records Administration. But despite Trump’s insistence that the files should not be redacted, many still have blacked-out passages. Others are so faded or poorly photocopied that they are illegible.

In the matter of Donald Trump v. Leviathan, let me begin by stipulating that Sir Thomas More was right in A Man for All Seasons when he remonstrated with his future son-in-law William Roper.  Roper was urging More to arrest the scheming Richard Rich, whose machinations would eventually lead to More’s execution. But, More points out, Rich had broken no law.   William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law! Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that! Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

In June 2021, Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and ridiculed people that dismissed the possibility of a lab leak origin for Covid. He quipped: “Oh my God! There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? ‘Oh, I don't know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean.’ Or it’s the fucking chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it.” At the time, former CBS News anchor Dan Rather called Stewart’s rhetoric “dangerous and short-sighted.” Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman fumed that “celebrities” shouldn’t be considered reliable sources of information and Forbes rounded up viewers uncomfortable with Stewart’s words.

So much for President Donald J. Trump’s serial vows to extricate America from the Middle East’s seemingly endless wars and feuds. His bombing on Saturday of numerous targets in Yemen has further enmeshed it in them. Several weeks of bombing loom as Trump vows to crush the Iranian-backed Houthi militia and warns Tehran that it might be in for similar treatment.  His statement was unequivocal: “To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY! Do NOT threaten the American People, their President, who has received one of the largest mandates in Presidential History, or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable.”  Whether the Iranian mullahs will be impressed by Trump’s fulgurations is an open question.

It isn’t just a weekend of warmer weather for the President, who took off for Mar-a-Lago yesterday evening. It is possibly a weekend full of calmer news. The decision from Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer to let the spending bill advance in the Senate allowed the six-month extension to get over the line last night, as the Senate voted 54-46 to see it through. This seemed to give markets a temporary sense of relief as well, as growing expectation that the bill would pass saw stocks rally. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had their best day gains since Donald Trump took office again, while technology stocks also appeared to make a major comeback by the time markets closed yesterday.