It’s not that you can’t negotiate with people who possess real convictions. Of course you can. But the nature of the negotiation is entirely different. You have to take into account the other side’s values. You have to know their red lines. And you have to know that they can’t be personally bought. If a person genuinely believes their soul is at stake, then no amount of money or power can compensate them for an eternity in hell.
As Trump has concentrated the most transactional figures in American politics into his coalition, it’s clear that they’ve created their own alternate reality — where everyone is like them, willing to surrender even their deepest values (if they even have deep values) when the price is right.
Yet that alternate reality was never going to hold. Trump was always going to confront true believers, and it is quite plain that MAGA is now fighting forces of both good and evil that they can’t even begin to understand.
Some other things I did
In lieu of writing my normal Sunday column, I had the chance to sit down with Justice Neil Gorsuch and talk to him about his new book — a children’s book about the Declaration of Independence — and discuss the American founding, originalism and his view of the role of history in constitutional jurisprudence. Here are some of the more interesting excerpts.
First, here’s Justice Gorsuch on the importance of the separation of powers:
We’re a creedal nation, right, David? I mean, we don’t share a religion, we don’t share a race, we share an idea, OK? And that idea has to be passed down generation to generation through history, as we discussed.
The Constitution, with its separation of powers, is our how-to manual. And the one thing James Madison knew, in devising the Virginia Plan basis of the Constitution, is that men are not angels, all right? And you have to separate power assiduously to keep us free, to ensure that everybody is treated equally, to make real the idea of self-rule, and certainly to protect your unalienable rights.
Next, here’s Justice Gorsuch on the role of the Supreme Court versus Congress:
Well, I do think that it would be crazy to say we are a democracy or a republic, and yet simultaneously entertain the notion that nine old judges in Washington should govern us all. Now, you’d want nine wise old judges to decide the meaning of a law independently, without fear or favor to anyone, and vindicate your rights in a trial. Absolutely, that makes perfect — but to rule everybody? To pass the laws? To amend the Constitution? That would make a mockery of the Declaration and of the Constitution.
I also asked Justice Gorsuch about his jurisprudence, particularly his emphasis on individual rights and the protection of individual liberty in the face of large and complex governmental systems:
I would say that one of the most striking and inspirational things about the American experiment, to me, is the emphasis it places on the individual and its intrinsic value. You’re not valuable as a cog and a machine to others’ ends. You have value in your own right. You are my equal. You have inalienable rights. You have every bit as much right to rule yourself as I do. And those ideas, I just think those are perfect ideas. Are they imperfectly executed? Do we have a ways to go, even today? You betcha. But those ideas speak to every human heart. They exclude no one and they inspire me, yes.
