“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error,” Trump advisor Stephen Miller tells the New York Times. “Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.”

The disgraced former president’s promised second-term program includes (according to the Times) “round[ing] up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain[ing] them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled,” using money illegally appropriated for other purposes, as he did with his “border wall” boondoggle.

Legally speaking, here’s the “vast arsenal of federal powers” regarding immigration that Miller references:

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The US Constitution not only doesn’t mention any federal power to regulate immigration (meaning, per the Tenth Amendment, that the federal government enjoys no such power), it unambiguously forbade any such power prior to 1808 (per Article 1, Section 9), after which a constitutional amendment would have been required to create one.

The moral side  of the equation is even simpler: Where a peaceful individual chooses to travel to (and possibly settle down at) isn’t Donald Trump’s business, or yours, or mine, except to the extent that we may choose to associate, or do business with, them (or not to).

Not that Trump, or the Republican Party, or any other political class leader or institution, cares what the Constitution says, what they’re legally “allowed” to do, or what’s right.

Laws are for the little people, not them. Your rights aren’t due any respect whatsoever, unless they find it convenient to pretend such respect. Which is rarely, since the powerful always crave more power whether or not they’re entitled to any power at all.

Thus, it’s reasonable to expect that if Trump is elected to the presidency again, he’ll try to implement what he promised an Iowa audience in September: “The largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Do Americans bear a responsibility — a moral duty — to resist such lawlessness on the part of Trump and his minions?

I’m tempted to say no, for the same reason that I don’t think you’re morally obliged to park in front of my house each night and make sure it isn’t burglarized.

On the other hand, if you buy the burglar a set of lock picks and loan him your car, you’re part of his burglary ring.

Do you pay taxes? Unless you own nothing, buy nothing, and earn nothing, the answer is yes. As do those Trump wants to victimize.

Where does he plan to get the money to build those camps and pay those kidnappers? From the aforementioned taxes, of course — even if he borrows it on the promise to tax you for it later.

He plans to make you part of his criminal conspiracy whether you like it or not. So pretty much anything you do to thwart that conspiracy is at least justified, if not obligatory — up to and including burning the camps and incapacitating (in whatever manner) the kidnappers.

Resist much, obey little.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The people of the state of New York don’t like Donald J. Trump  much. They think he falsified business records, and have him in court over it.

Protecting abortion and legalizing marijuana are the will of the people of Ohio. They said so in a recent election.

Why does the United States have a constitution? Because “we the people” ordained and established one, that’s why.

Well, not exactly.

Trump was indicted by a prosecutor and grand jury, not by “the people of the state of New York.”

Abortion wasn’t protected and marijuana legalized by “the people of Ohio,”  but by about 57% of the Ohioan adults who chose to, and were allowed to, vote on November 7.

The US Constitution was ratified — “ordained and established” — by a few hundred legislators out of the country’s population of nearly 4 million, not by “we the people.”

People exist. “The people,” on the other hand, is a fiction that falsely implies unanimity of support, or at least of representation, to justify claimed unanimity of obligation.

About one in four Americans chose Joe Biden for president in 2020. The other 75% preferred someone else, or no one at all, or weren’t allowed to express their preferences in binding form. Guess who moved in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

One in five Floridians supported Ron DeSantis for governor in 2022, with nearly as many supporting someone else and the majority not voting (by choice or because they were forbidden to).  The 80% of Floridians who wanted nothing to do with DeSantis got him anyway.

If five hundred voters from a town of 5,000 people elect a city council of seven,  all 5,000 people are supposedly bound to obey rules made by those seven, pay taxes set by and disposed of by those seven, etc., because “the people have spoken.”

If I seem to be bashing the whole concept of “democracy” as practiced in modern America, well, I am.

That’s not to say that voting is any WORSE than a would-be dictator showing up with enough armed supporters to successfully proclaim himself the embodiment of a “national will” or the tribune of some racial, ethnic, religious, or political group’s “collective interest.”

But it’s not really any better, either.

Engaging in a bunch of “democratic” preening and ceremony doesn’t change the results.

Nor have attempts to “bind [our rulers] down from mischief,” as Thomas Jefferson put it, “by the chains of the Constitution,” proven successful.

Today’s “democratically elected” rulers enjoy more power over every aspect of our lives than any Egyptian pharaoh,  Roman emperor, or European monarch dared dream of wielding.

The first step toward freedom is admitting the problem, which is mistaking  “democracy” and politics for liberty. As William Tecumseh Sherman explained 150 years ago: “Vox populi, vox humbug.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“It don’t mean a thing,” Duke Ellington and Irving Mills informed us in 1931, “if it ain’t got that swing.”

Does Ohio still have that swing?

Over the last few years some, including University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven, have cast doubt on the state’s long-held “swing state” or “belwether” status in national elections — but presidential polling, combined with the results of the November 7 election, show that the Buckeye State could be as relevant as ever when it comes to discerning national political trends.

Recent New York Times and Siena College polls show former president Donald Trump leading incumbent Joe Biden in five of six non-Ohio “swing” states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennslyvania — all of which Trump carried in 2016 but lost in 2020 — with Biden ahead only in Wisconsin. But those same polls also predict a large shift in Biden’s direction if Trump is convicted in some or all of his currently pending criminal cases.

Meanwhile, the most recent Ohio poll noted at RealClearPolitics, from early October, has Trump up on Biden by 12 points. Not a lot of “swing” vibe there.

On the other hand, on November 7, Ohio’s voters defied the Republican Party’s positions on major issues, enshrining  abortion rights in the state’s constitution and legalizing recreational use of marijuana.

It’s not just Ohio moving in those directions. As the Libertarian Policy Institute’s Nicholas Sarwark notes, “[e]lection results across the country show a clear demand for broadly libertarian policies and candidates.”

Neither of the likely “major party” presidential nominees seem especially well-suited to exploit what looks like a potential “libertarian moment” (as Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie might put it). Nor does the Republican field of also-rans.

On the Democratic side, however, there may be room for movement … if Joe Biden retires from the race and endorses a better candidate.

Three names come to mind: Jared Polis of Colorado, Laura Kelly of Kansas, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. All three are Democratic governors who’ve proven they can beat Republicans in red (Kansas and Kentucky) or “purple” (Colorado) states, both for election to office and on the “individal freedom” side of policy issues like abortion and marijuana.

I’m not personally endorsing, nor do I expect to vote for, any of them (or for Biden or Trump). But if  the Democrats want to win America’s swing states, those are the hard choices involved in getting competitive. And the clock is ticking.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY