The Perverse Roots of Anti-Trump Lawfare

What’s driving the lawfare against Donald Trump and MAGA?

Superficially, the answer is politics and the quest for power, where lawfare is the only practicable way for power to be gained. That’s because Democrat policies and ideology — lawfare is a Democrat thing — are widely unpopular, notably with independents, in whose hands nationwide election outcomes frequently rest. Under normal circumstances, open borders, infanticide, “chest-feeding” and other transgender fictions — in general, turning America into California — do not present ready avenues to political power.

And now, with Judge Arthur Engoron’s $355-million fine of Trump for his Manhattan business dealings, we see what is really driving lawfare: unreason. Not corruption, although that’s a factor. (Since there are no victims for Trump’s “fraud,” the state of New York gets to have the money, which is self-dealing on steroids.) No, what’s undermining the rule of law is a kind of irrationality. Unquestionably, the rule of law is facing an ignoble collapse in New York State. Learned Hand and Benjamin Cardozo must be rolling in their graves.

Corruption isn’t the driver of the rule of law’s impending collapse unless intellectual corruption is meant. And even that doesn’t really explain the present threat to the rule of law. It’s not corruption of the intellect that’s driving the nationwide practice of lawfare, of which the state of New York is merely a harbinger (including A.G. Letitia James’s embryonic prosecution qua persecution of the invaluable website Vdare). No, the real driver of lawfare is unreason — disdain for, or thinly veiled hostility toward, impartial rationality, of the kind that Cardozo and Hand devoutly believed in.

As for why it’s happening now, we know the short answer: TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome. The longer answer is harder to guess. But let’s suggest something more immediate than the cultural vagaries of second- and third-rate philosophers: the charismatic intellectual balderdash of Barack Obama. I need not elaborate. America’s current travails began with, and because of, President Obama and his brand of Harvard “veritas.” Think of Claudine Gay as the intellectual upshot of Obamaism, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of why lawfare is now happening, and to whom it’s happening.

The rule of law is imbued with, and depends on, reason and reasoning. Reasoning requires intelligence, but the purpose of intelligence is thoughtfulness, which is frequently lacking in smart people. Think of Larry Summers (circa 1994) on trade, or Barack Obama on many things, and contrast that subpar or middling degree of thoughtfulness with John Rawls’s. (Rawls is my favorite thoughtful liberal, although he had a partial blind spot on abortion. I assume that he, too, the author of the magisterial Political Liberalism, is rolling in his grave at the spectacle of Democrat lawfare.)

Few people think of Trump in terms of thoughtfulness, but give credit where it’s due: on free trade, he “got it” well before most of us did, as his 1990 Playboy interview showed. And consider his current alarm at the very real danger of nuclear war posed by needlessly poking the Russian bear, specifically by reckless official talk of expanding NATO to Ukraine, which includes Crimea, where Russia has a vital navy port. Surely the avoidance of nuclear war, when that can be easily done, is an apex of thoughtfulness?

The latter affects our literal survival; the former affects our nation’s prosperity and stability (a shrinking middle class is an invitation to long-run social and political instability). On these big things, and the huge immigration issue, Trump is right, and his opponents are wrong and/or deluded. How ironic that a leader having thoughtful positions on important political matters is subjected to lawfare — to thoughtlessness, to unreasoning, to irrationality, and precisely at the expense of the rule of law.

The rule of law presupposes thoughtfulness, as the most pertinent form of rationality for maintaining a fair legal system. Legal “rules” are just manifestations of thoughtfulness, given the conditions at hand. Lawfare is the antithesis of this — but don’t tell Judge Engoron. He wouldn’t want to hear such impieties.

The legal system can’t justly be regarded as a kind of warfare, which of course is how “lawfare” gets its name. The only conceivable rational justification for lawfare is that the ends justify the means. But the history of communism shows how dangerous that kind of thinking is.

If Democrats really are honest, they will abandon lawfare and try to persuade people the old-fashioned way. Hint: Being thoughtful has something to do with it. They will do this first on the core issues affecting society. These are trade, immigration, and avoidance of nuclear war. Honest Democrats will try to prove to the public’s satisfaction that Trump is wrong about those issues and proceed from there.

But Trump isn’t wrong about those things, and certainly not clearly wrong. Having no use for intellectual honesty, the Democrats seem determined to proceed with lawfare. Engoron the Great! (No doubt Judge Engoron has fancies of historical awesomeness.)

Democrats forget, or don’t care, that reason is the true and ultimate foundation of the rule of law. Lawfare is the antithesis of reason and the enemy of the American experiment. It must be vanquished, and its practitioners punished or forever shamed.