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I had a longer effort post that got eaten by the gateway monster but as a change of pace from all the LLM talk I'm curious if any one was watching the SOTU. My reflexive read was broadly positive but I also felt a bit uneasy with there being not just one but two CMHs and two Purple Hearts and a Legion of Merit. My feeling is that this was not the proper place, at the same time I think that Trump may have scored a significant mid-term coup by by calling on people to stand if they felt that the first duty of the government is to the citizens of the nation, "why wouldn't you stand for that" feels like something that will be showing up in campaign commercials come August.
The exact quote was, "the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens" ... which is a bit more obviously Orwellian than your paraphrase. Maybe that's just a question of style; as a question of substance, both the original quote and the paraphrase are wrong.
The first duty of the American government is to obey the Constitution.
That's a complicated duty, and far-too-often breached, but at least technically that's the duty that qualifies our leaders to fit the definition of "the American government" rather than for an entry in the wiki for auto-coup. It's not always even a popular duty, though it's generally at least popular enough that "pass an amendment to widen what other duties the government can legally handle" doesn't ever get considered. Many people think violating the Second Amendment would be a good way to protect American citizens from shootings. Most think violating the Tenth Amendment often helpfully protects American citizens from being taken advantage of. Some think violating some combination of the Fourth through Eighth Amendments is a good way to protect American citizens from criminals. A few think violating Art. I election laws could be justified to protect American citizens from bad politicians. Many thought that violating the Assembly Clause was justified to protect American citizens from Covid.
They're all wrong.
Those are all real threats that American citizens deserve some protection from, true, and so are illegal aliens (both in the sense that some are serious criminals and in the sense that all of them do a little bit to undermine the rule of law), but the concept of protection is not a backdoor password to unchecked power, and it it seems pretty transparent that the people who attempt to use it that way are more interested in the power than in the protection.
...and the first words of the Constitution are the Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The lens through which the rest of the document must be read is one of in-group preference. In fact, just to hammer the point, home, the power (and, implicitly, the duty) to "establish a uniform rule of naturalization" - i.e., standards for who gets let into the in-group, and who has to remain on the outside - is explicitly granted to Congress by Article 1, Section 8. No need to muck around with "necessary and proper" implicit federal powers, like we do for such trivial things as setting up the Fed. No, establishing and policing the boundary between Americans and non-Americans is very much within the scope of the Constitution's mandate.
If you want to do nitpicky exegesis, this only singles out "ourselves and our Posterity" as the intended beneficiary of the "Blessings of Liberty", since the "to" can't attach to any of the preceding clauses (provide for the common defence "to" ourselves(...)...?). Moreover, it's just listed as one among many objectives. The "We the People" bit, as much as people like turning it into a shibboleth for their favoured political package, does not seem to be doing anything apart from identifying the party in whose name the following document is issued.
It seems like a rather unreasonable leap to go from something that amounts to "In order to strive towards objectives A, B, C, D, E and F, we proclaim the following set of rules to constrain the behaviour of $entity" to "The first duty of $entity is some mixture of C and D but only for the beneficiaries stated in F". It would even be unreasonable if you just said that {A,B,C,D,E,F} together is "the first duty" of the US government: the whole point of having a constitution is to not leave it up to the government, or any future individuals, to determine how to best implement these six things, but to establish a priori a common agreement on how it is to be done, so that these instructions (hopefully less ambiguous than the original goals) can henceforth be used as a terminal goal. You would not need a constitution otherwise, but could just have a one-paragraph blob saying "the government shall form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, (...)".
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“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”
I would say our government is designed to protect American’s right to life, liberty, and property. Maybe Trump’s meaning was merely about safety but I think you could read it more broadly (especially consistent with his general America first messaging) that our government should be focused on protecting our lives, our liberty, and our property.
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I see where you're going with this, and to some extent agree that a shared commitment to the words is what embodies the power of the American government, but I wouldn't go wholesale on this because it'd be too easy to See Like A State and circularly define that the first duty of American Government is to protect American Government (defined as a polity that obeys the Constitution), and governments protecting themselves qua governments over the actual opinions of The People is basically the definition of totalitarianism.
So I think I'll argue that there is a Zeroth Principle in the Constitution that the American people choose to bind themselves by it until and unless they decide to change it (via the established procedures) or replace it, for which some procedures have been written, but other routes are implied to exist by the Declaration of Independence.
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No you're actually wrong. The first duty of a government is to serve its people. Constitutions are just a means of achieving that.
No, that's the first goal of a government. And Constitutions are the means of achieving that, not just a means, because it's such a complex and difficult-to-evaluate goal that you have to operationalize it in terms of more objective rules; otherwise in practice it stops being a goal and starts being an excuse.
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Asking a yes-no intention with the transparent intention to treat "yes" as an endorsement of the bailey and "no" as an attack on the motte is one of the oldest tricks in the motte-and-bailey arguers playbook.
I'm sure that Republicans will run on "Democrats are for illegal immigrants, we are for you" in the mid-terms, regardless of what Democrats say or do, and that the Democrats will respond with stories about Republicans deporting nurses, military spouses etc. The voters already know that the Democrats are insane on immigration, and that Trump in particular is borderline-insane in the other direction.
I am reasonably sure that the effectiveness of these lines does not depend on a specific audience-participation kafkatrap - if the Democrats actually had a credible immigration policy, then running tape of them not dancing like monkeys during SOTU would just be standard-issue negative campaigning of the type that doesn't move elections relative to the fundamentals.
It's very easy to imagine the reverse scenario too - a Democrat president asks all those who think fascism has no place in America to stand up, most (or all) Republicans refuse because they understand that when the Democrats say "fascism" they don't mean the Nazis, they mean them. Then all the Democratic-aligned media say look at all these fascists.
I'm sure they would understand the veiled message, but I don't have the sense that they'd fall for the bait in quite the same way. I'm sure you could construct a situation where it would work, but "stand if you hate fascists" isn't going to trick anyone on the right.
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Yeah - I don't think that would move the needle either.
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If I were a Republican representative, I'd have no issue standing to such a question because i don't self-identify as a fascist. It would actually be great for all the Republicans to stand for such a question because it exposes how ridiculous the Democratic framing of the current political situation is.
And here's the blood boiling headline you would have just handed the press: "In a massive blow to Trump and the MAGA movement, even Republicans representatives say they are now turning away from fascism."
The press will do what the press will do, but that might not be a terrible message for Republicans heading to the midterms with Trump's popularity ratings being where they are.
If Red Tribe needs the approval of the press to secure political victory, political victory is no longer a viable option and we will need to find alternative paths to securing our values. We have plenty of evidence of what results from cooperation, conciliation, compromise and capitulation to Blue Tribe. There is no road forward there.
Blues and "moderates" act as though if Trump could just be disposed of, all this ferment will go away. But the reality is that Trump is the moderate, mild voice of peace. If he fails, we will escalate until either we are destroyed or until we find a way to get the outcomes we consider necessary. Trump is an expression of the wicked problem of apportioning political power in a values-incoherent society, and not the progenitor of that problem nor meaningfully in control of it.
The blues think that if Trump could just be disposed of, Red WILL be destroyed.
As we've discussed at some length, I think they are badly mistaken in this assessment.
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With any photos of a face caught looking awkward or annoyed analyzed as "guilty of being a fascist themselves and obviously feeling called out".
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I don't self-identify as a fascist either, but the label has been abused to the point that it is self-defeating to cooperate with its continued use.
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Is there a term for this sort of gotcha technique (referring to Trump's behavior, not your analysis)? It shows up similarly in polling, too, where it's clear that the question is blatant bait, people take the bait because of course they determine that the correct answer from their pov is "that's bait, fuck you", and then it gets used as red meat for the base.
I feel like, if a term were to exist for this, it should allude to Greek tragedies. It's one of those cases where everyone, including the baited, can tell that it's bait and that the winning move is to just simply answer in the most straingforward, simple and honest way possible, but their pride prevents them from doing so because that would be giving their enemies a "win." So they respond with something like "that's bait, fuck you," which is precisely the response that most benefits the baiter.
Unfortunately, what's likely the most famous Greek example of something like this already has very strong connotations of motherfucking, so something else would need to be found for the term.
I don't think that works out either because your answer will be twisted into whatever is most convenient to the person framing it.
"Politician A says he supports position B but he voted for Bill C. We need less dishonest politicians in Washington, we need someone who not only talks the talks, but walks the walks. Vote for Politician D"
As long as there is a Bill C that can be, with the proper framing, made to seem like it's in opposition to position B (and there always is), then answering straightforwardly did nothing to help. Worse, it might make you seem gutless and insufficiently defiant to your base. Trump didn't go from laughing stock political outsider to 2 term POTUS by giving the straightforward, compliant answer to this kind of question, he got there by doubling down on "that's bait, fuck you" every time.
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