Let’s Talk About Fear

Earlier this week, I read a series of depressingly familiar news reports. The secretaries of state in charge of vote counts in Georgia and Arizona have received a series of threats to their families and their staffs. The threats come regardless of party affiliation. Here’s a sampling of the threats directed at Georgia Republican Brad Raffensperger and his wife:

And now here’s a statement from Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs:

And remember, these statements come on the heels of news that the CIA’s “most endangered employee for much of the past year” was the whistleblower who helped launch the impeachment proceedings against the president. 

Threats like this have become so common that they barely make a ripple in the news. In fact, they’re so common that if you talk to publicly prominent Trump opponents, especially Trump opponents on the right, it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t faced threats to their career or the most vicious and vile personal attacks. And it’s distressingly common to hear stories that go well beyond “ordinary” internet harassment.

I’ve been politically active my entire adult life. I’ve been engaged in party activism (I was a delegate to the 2012 GOP convention), I’ve been a religious liberty and pro-life litigator, and I’m no stranger to contentious debates on the most controversial political issues in the United States of America. I know the tired old phrase that “politics ain’t beanbag.”

I’ve also never seen anything like the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that’s reigned on the right from the moment that Donald Trump seized the commanding heights of the GOP. I strongly believe this reality explains a great deal of public Republican silence and compliance in the face of even obvious and egregious Trump deceptions, incompetence, and misdeeds. The Trumpist wing of the GOP wields a big stick even as it also offers a rather tasty carrot … if you yield. 

I’m not going to rehash my own experiences. I’ve talked about them publicly and repeatedly—partly to expose the reality of this political moment and partly to signal that my wife and I won’t be intimidated into silence. But I think it’s important to highlight other people’s ordeals to help explain 1) why GOP figures are often silent when Trump and his allies lie, violate basic rules of decency, or spin out bizarre conspiracy theories; and 2) why I tend to have compassion for that silence.

Quite simply, if you’re not in the fight, you don’t know what it’s like.

MAGA intimidation works much like cancel culture on the left, but with twists unique to the American right. Whereas accusations of racism can ruin a career in the American academy, accusations of cowardice or weakness (which often include odd claims of effeminacy) can destroy a man’s reputation in the GOP. Critics accuse dissenters of cowardice if they don’t yield to the Republican consensus.

Yet “only cowards don’t conform” is an odd way to define bravery.

But that’s the mildest response. After the insults come attacks on a person’s career or livelihood. Donors will threaten to withhold funds unless a conservative employer takes action to remove or restrict the offending employee. These threats come from aggrieved and offended Republicans, often the very same folks who sneer at the campus “snowflakes” or laugh at, for example, the angry crowd of Yale students who surrounded my friend Nicholas Christakis.

The escalations will often continue until a person faces cyber-harassment, slander, and physical threats. And then, when a person raises their voice to call out the intolerable punishment inflicted on them for wrongthink and wrongspeak, he or she is accused of being weak for not suffering in silence.

That’s the stick of the Trump era. But there’s also a carrot, and it’s a carrot that’s far more appealing than mere continued inclusion on Team Red. If the dissenters from Trumpism are weak, then its guardians are strong. They’re tough. In this formulation, support for Trump is actually heroic in a way that support for Mitt Romney or John McCain or George W. Bush never was.

Thus, deep in the heart of MAGA there is a band-of-brothers camaraderie, an us-against-the-world bond that has deep psychological power. And while it’s popular to call NeverTrump a grift, NeverTrump’s resources pale in comparison to the commercial opportunity in speaking and writing the words that MAGA wants to hear—especially if those words can place an intellectual and spiritual frame around their affection for Trump and the movement he’s made.

For example, many Fox contributors earn money on a pay-per-appearance model. They don’t make much money if they’re not on television. Thus, there is very real financial pressure to say words that the Fox audience wants to hear, to increase the demand for their presence. 

The right answer to the Trumpist carrot and stick is to defy conservative cancel culture, take the financial risk, and speak the truth as best you can discern it. The human answer is that defiance is far, far easier imagined than accomplished.

For example, I personally know progressives who are absolutely furious that GOP figures don’t speak out against Trump, but those same individuals are petrified of the intolerant elements of their own political tribe. They wouldn’t dream of speaking against the most-woke elements of the radical left. After all, their jobs are at stake. Their reputations hang in the balance. Remember the now-famous Vox essay, “I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me”? I’ve heard that sentiment many times.

In the years since Trump came down the escalator, pundits have spilled millions of gallons of ink in the effort to define Trumpism. But as my esteemed colleague Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, it escapes easy ideological categorization. MAGA contains multitudes.

Is Trumpism the Paul Ryan tax cuts? Or is it the traditional Republican, classical-liberal judicial appointments? The expanded air war in Somalia? Or the troop drawdown in Afghanistan? Every Republican faction can take a portion from the Trump policy buffet. Why? Because Trump has no real ideological core.

But he does have a temperamental core. He does have a fundamental style. And that style is exactly mirrored in the carrot and stick of tremendous rewards versus terrible punishment. Join the band of brothers or face worse than exclusion. It’s not only  potent tactic, it’s the very essence of Trumpism,

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Trumpism may not have a coherent underlying ideology, but it does have an underlying method. And if the last five years have taught us anything, it’s that while his supporters and allies may not be able to re-create Trump’s charisma and fame, they can imitate his cruelty, and cruelty can be a very effective political weapon indeed.

Another thing …

Writing in First Things, Notre Dame professor Vincent Phillip Muñoz penned a rather negative review of my book, Divided We Fall. That’s completely fine—no author should be so thin-skinned that they believe their ideas are beyond critique.

But if I may, I’m going to offer a brief negative review of the negative review. Essentially, Muñoz says that my recommended responses to the forces driving us apart are inadequate to meet the challenge of American division and the threat of the left. For example, he says I’m too timid on policy:

A bolder book, one more ­serious about federalism and local self-­government, would recognize that preserving American freedom requires the repeal of entire federal bureaucracies, including the Department of Education, and a curtailment of tech oligopolies. An even bolder book would follow Christopher Caldwell in calling for the repeal of federal non-discrimination law, or at least a return to its original limited colorblind intentions. At minimum, one might have expected more from French, who made his mark as a constitutional lawyer, on the necessity of overturning the Supreme Court precedents that dictate American life. But French is not particularly interested in judicial supremacy or in how the Supreme Court has ­prevented the American people from governing themselves. He supports First Amendment precedents on speech and religion that deny local communities the ability to govern according to their own moral standards.

I’ll freely admit that I’m guilty of not proposing solutions that are unworkable and/or undesirable. I tried as much to ground my book in solutions that are reasonably achievable (even if optimistic) and not in the kind of dorm room-style debate that ponders impossible reforms. If you read the book, you’ll note that each federalism proposal is grounded in both actual and seriously considered state laws. 

No one is repealing the Civil Rights Act, for example, and there is ample room for increased federalism and local control even if federal civil rights statutes remain. Moreover, let’s not forget that the Civil Rights Act protects employees from discrimination on the basis of religion as well as race and sex. 

And consider the real-world consequences of repealing civil rights laws and sharply limiting First Amendment jurisprudence. Does my friend want a starkly divided, increasingly secular nation to empower companies to, for example, discriminate against Christians in employment—an action that’s barred by existing law? And as secularization increases, does he want, say, San Francisco to have the power to deny fundamental First Amendment rights to their dissenting citizens in the name of governing “according to their own moral standards”?

I’m especially puzzled by the desire to weaken constitutional protections for individual liberty and statutory protections against invidious discrimination when the threat from the left is as grave as Muñoz seems to believe:

What French seems not to see, and what led Ahmari to launch his spirited attack, is that America is being radically remade. Drag queen story hour at the local library is just the beginning. The progressive left’s stated end is the destruction of “­heteronormativity,” the legal restriction of traditional religious communities, and the destruction of the nuclear family. This utopian political vision rejects any natural standard of right and wrong. It rejects the idea that we live within a moral order created by God. When it was relegated to university cultural studies departments, it could perhaps be overlooked. Now it is overtaking corporate America, the federal bureaucracy, and the Democratic Party. Appeals to pluralism and tolerance are too feeble to confront such a foe.

French’s federalism-enhanced procedural liberalism does not recognize the threat to America for what it is. The recommendations offered in Divided We Fall make sense for a prior time; they are insufficient today. The progressives remaking American institutions will not be deterred by winsomeness. They will not abide by procedure. They have no illusion that America ever was or ever could be based on procedural neutrality. If America is to remain the home of people who share David French’s theological convictions, we will need something more than his political strategy. 

What I see, and Muñoz seems not to see is that the threat to fundamental American values is not an exclusively radical-left enterprise. A right captured by cruelty and illiberalism is not building a better America, and it’s certainly not building a governing majority. Moreover, it is curious to see Muñoz blithely assert that the radical left is overtaking the Democratic party when large segments of the Democratic party are not only in open revolt against the radical left, the moderate faction soundly defeated the radicals in the Democratic presidential primary—and the radicals know it.

Who represents the greater departure from American political norms? Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

In a contest of power between large, competing political factions, it is odd to see advocates of the minority faction (the GOP has won exactly one presidential popular vote since 1988) reject political reform centered around appeals to individual liberty, local control, and personal tolerance. 

It’s especially odd to see this rejection when, in fact, American Christians enjoy more formal religious liberty protections than any time in American history, in part through the exact political and legal strategy that I (and many others) have pursued. An altered approach that grants government more power over individuals will almost certainly result in less liberty for cultural conservatives, not more. 

If the church in America cannot survive and thrive within the umbrella of liberty it now possesses, then might I suggest that the fault lies not with our politics, but within the church itself.

One more thing …

Speaking of my book, I was incredibly honored that World Magazine’s Marvin Olasky dubbed my book the “understanding America book of the year.” If you haven’t read it yet, might I humbly suggest ordering it today? You can buy it here.

One last thing …

The NBA draft was Wednesday night, and it’s time to greet the newest Grizzly, the steal of the draft. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Desmond Bane:

Photograph by B.A. Van Sise/NurPhoto via Getty Images.