ArgumentThere Is Nothing Conservative About What Trump Is Doing in Portland
Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump threaten to send more federal troops to cities with Democratic mayors, ignoring the adamant objections of mayors, governors, and local sheriffs. “How greatly have traditional conservative values of federalism and limited government been transformed,” Paul Rosenzweig and Arthur Rizerwent, two conservative commentators, write. Video evidence shows that these CBP “agents are not merely protecting federal property; they have detained citizens who aren’t violating any law and used the power of their presence to chill civil protests and disobedience.” The writers add: “This is a complete corruption of conservative ideals…. The consequences of this radical expansion of federal law-enforcement authority are enormous—and none of them are likely to be good.”
Last week Attorney General William Barr, in the words of Paul Rosenzweig and Arthur Rizerwent, “went full interventionist,” telling the press that he was deploying federal law-enforcement officers to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico (this coming after the previous week’s deployment to Portland), to combat “violent criminal activity.” President Trump said much the same thing as he rattled off cities his administration was eyeing for future intervention—Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit—because of “gun violence” and “drugs.”
Rosenzweig and Rizerwent, writing in The Atlantic, add:
How greatly have traditional conservative values of federalism and limited government been transformed. Today, a sitting Republican president invokes the power of the federal government to send militarized Department of Homeland Security agents (equipped with military-grade weapons, body armor, tear gas, and camouflage, like armed forces entering a war zone) to swarm American city streets under unwritten rules of engagement. If video evidence now circulating is to be credited, these agents are not merely protecting federal property; they have detained citizens who aren’t violating any law and used the power of their presence to chill civil protests and disobedience.
This is a complete corruption of conservative ideals. There is nothing conservative about unconstitutional police activity, and there is nothing conservative about unilateral federal intervention in state affairs. Those are the acts of an authoritarian.
The consequences of this radical expansion of federal law-enforcement authority are enormous—and none of them are likely to be good. This is what is keeping both of us awake at night. We are conservatives who are united in our love of the Constitution, the limited rule of law, effective government, individual rights, and civil discourse. We believe in checks and balances and the separation of powers.
And we are watching all of this crumble before our eyes, as the executive branch deploys unchecked power.
In order to prevent unaccountable authority from growing without limit, James Madison, in “Federalist No. 45,, assured us that the “powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.”
“Perhaps Madison’s predictions have not proved completely accurate,” Rosenzweig and Rizerwent, write.
But those concerns that animated him more than 200 years ago remain the same today. And that is why Americans should be gravely concerned with how President Trump has transformed federal authority. Forty years ago, President Ronald Reagan said that the nine most terrifying words in English language were “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Today he might revise that statement to, “We’re from the government, and we’re in charge—of everything.”
