Unconstrained

“I don’t need international law,” said President Trump in a recent interview with correspondents from the New York Times.  The President also claimed on Truth Social, that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law(originally attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, “Celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi”). Showing he is a man of his word, President Trump has recently captured and arrested a foreign head of state (Maduro), threatened to invade an ally (Greenland), bombed nuclear facilities (Iran), threatened to indict a public servant for not lowering interest rates (Fed Chief Jerome Powell) and imposed tariffs on any country that pisses him off.

Clearly President Trump does not feel constrained to refrain from any action he deems fit if it solves a problem that he wants solved. His ardent MAGA supporters cheer every action no matter how outrageous it might be saying that something had to be done and that he was courageous for doing it. His progressive left opponents light up social media and the streets of blue cities with their furious protests. A majority of citizens scratch their heads and wonder “what the hell is going on in this country.”

The media describes President Trump and his MAGA supporters as conservatives but they are anything but conservatives. They are the opposite of conservatives, they are radicals. But in their radicalism they appear to be becoming indistinguishable from their radical left opponents. The MAGA Movement members share many traits with the progressive left socialists (It is mullets versus pink hair and nose rings).

In trying to figure out what is going on I turned to Thomas Sowell for an explanation. In 1987, he wrote, A Conflict of Visions (I have the 2007 republished version). In that book he described two very different world views, what he called the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. The constrained vision was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment based on the writings of John Locke . The Lockean Enlightenment elevated the rights of the individual but constrained the scope of action of the individual not only because of our inherent human frailty but also because of the rights of all the other individuals in society. Those individual rights are the basis for the unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence but we also needed a constitution to constrain the government’s ability to limit those rights.

Adam Smith noted in his first book, The  Theory of Moral Sentiments, that while individual human beings are interested in the well-being of other humans that it is natural that the empathy we feel for others is less than our own self-interest and the interests of our family. The more remote the relationship the less the empathy. But self-interest does not have to end in a dog-eat-dog world as described by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. Smith describes in his second book, The Wealth of Nations, how the self-interest of the baker and the brewer result in bread and beer for the people in the village. In a free market environment a person’s self-interest can best be served by providing goods and services to his neighbors in exchange for goods and services provided by those neighbors, thus the public good is provided by people acting in their own self-interest.

Also in the eighteenth century, William Godwin wrote in his book, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, that people were capable of providing social benefits and that the unselfish intentions of a person were “the essence of virtue” thus elevating the public good over the rights of the individual. The French Enlightenment did not believe in unchangeable human nature but believed that at birth humans were a “tabula rasa” or a blank slate. This led to an unconstrained vision for the future of human society not limited by the constraints of the rights of individuals and their self-interest.

People with the unconstrained vision do not accept that self-interest is an immutable part of human nature but rather a result of the incentives of the political and economic systems that lead people astray. They believe that within the correct political and economic system  people can be educated to put the public good ahead of personal gain. It is just logical that the good of a thousand people carries more weight than the gain of a single person (think Elon Musk).

So what does all of this eighteenth century philosophical discussion have to do with Donald Trump, who has probably never read any of the books mentioned here. The Founders of America believed in the constrained but pragmatic interpretation of the Enlightenment principles that evolved into the inspiring Declaration of Independence and to pragmatic application of those principles in the US Constitution that have lasted us 250 years. An unconstrained interpretation of Enlightenment principles currently popular among the left has led to the belief that all sorts of social justice goals are achievable and that anyone opposed to those well intended goals must be a bad person. Under this assumption self-interested people should be forced to submit their interests to the public will for the good of society.

Donald Trump clearly believes in the unconstrained vision. He has a notion of what is best for America and he is unconstrained in using the power of government to achieve it. That’s why Leftist Senator Elizabeth Warren is in agreement with Trump’s plan to reduce credit card interest rates to 10%. Both Senator Warren and President Trump believe that credit card interest rates are too high. And their solution is the same. Use the power of government to order banks to lower their rates. But the constrained vision understands that there are unintended consequences to the use of such government power. Credit card interest rates are high because these unsecured loans on unpaid balances have much higher default rates than secured loans such as home mortgages and car loans. To offset potential losses from the lower rates imposed by President Trump banks will apply much stricter credit standards before issuing cards and reduce credit limits for existing cards. Poor people needing credit will be forced to go to pay day lenders or loan sharks charging much higher rates to get the money they need to pay bills.

Dr. Sowell clearly believes in the benefits of the constrained vision, as do I. But human beings are both individuals and social animals. As such, we possess variations of both the constrained and unconstrained visions. NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt noted this difference in the moral axes of conservatives and liberals in his book, The Righteous Mind and neurobiologist Dr. Robert Sapolsky also wrote on how the differences between trophy species and pair-bonding species are mixed together in humans, in his book Behave. These behaviors are not learned but are innate.

History shows us that traditional authoritarian societies are clearly led by the unconstrained vision of the king or dictator. But while Western societies with a constrained vision have elevated the individual and created the prosperous modern world, we must realize that for such a world to work the public good must also be addressed. The question is how to balance these two aspects of humanity.

We will soon be able to see just how unconstrained Donald Trump actually is. The Framers of the Constitution included checks and balances on unconstrained power. The Supreme Court will soon rule on whether President Trump can impose tariffs without Congressional authorization. Trump’s argument to maintain his tariff powers is based on how much it would cost if they were struck down. I don’t think the Court will take that into account. In addition there are other cases pending before the Court. And there are elections later this year that will determine the balance of power in the House and Senate going forward.

President Trump has been largely successful in his exercise of unconstrained power. The dictator Maduro is in jail. Drugs are being interdicted on the high seas. Illegal border crossings are practically nil and deportations continue apace. He relishes the power of government to implement policies (as long he is the chief executive of that government). The unconstrained use of government power can be effective in the short run – until unintended consequences overwhelm the intended public good.

America has been subjected to the consequences of the unconstrained vision for far too long and the consequences of those policies are beginning to mount. It is time for the pendulum to swing back to Dr. Sowell’s constrained vision that guided America for most of its history.