Month: February 2022

Globalization Has Become the Tool to Defeat Putin

Mike Pompeo, who served as Trump’s Secretary of State, had to defend his recent remarks about Vladimir Putin being “savvy” and “very talented.” His response demonstrated an appalling ignorance.

Rather than answer the question, Pompeo kept talking about “fighting communism,” something that hasn’t existed in Russia since the early 1990s.

It is worth noting that, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia began to sell off all of its national assets – something that Vladimir Putin helped manage for then-President Boris Yeltsin. That gave Putin the knowledge and strategy he used to consolidate power by controlling the oligarchs who were empowered by the privatization.

All of that is important as we watch the world unite by implementing catastrophic sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine. The transition from communism to oligarchy moved Russia away from being economically isolated, putting them in the midst of a globalized economy.

The process of globalization impacts the processes of change on the local and regional scale…globalization implies a stretching of social, political, and economic activities across frontiers such that events, decisions, and activities in one region of the world can impact individuals and societies elsewhere, as well as an increased interconnectedness which transcends individual states…In the case of the Russian Federation and other post-Soviet states…we see societies that were previously closed off from global influence are now open to all these forces.

Max Fisher was one of the only reporters to point this out back in 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea.

The lesson that Putin is learning is that Russia depends on the global economy, whether it likes it or not, and the global economy doesn’t like it when you go invading other countries and tempting the richest nations in the world to maybe consider sanctioning you. This is actually a significant change for Russia, which at the height of its Soviet power was not integrated into the global economy and so didn’t have to worry about things like investor sentiment. But now it is and it does.

What’s cool about this is that it theoretically could apply to lots of other possible acts of international aggression around the world. This is something that economists and political scientists have been predicting since World War One: that integrating all the national economies into the global economy wouldn’t just make all of us richer; it would make war more economically painful for the people starting it and thus less likely to happen.

Of course, there are reasons to be concerned about the impact of globalization, but perhaps that puts a different spin on things than we’ve been used to hearing from the so-called “populists” who have been raging against it.

At this point, we don’t know the outcome of the war Russia has waged against Ukraine. But one of the reasons I have been transfixed as it develops is that it very well could represent the ultimate battle between the old world order and the new one. As I’ve suggested previously, Putin is attempting to turn the clock back to the days in which the most powerful countries were determined by their ability to dominate the rest of the world through military force.

After years of trying to sow divisions among the allies of democracy, Putin is running head-on into a united effort being waged against him by the new world order. It is important to remember that the strategies being used against Putin right now (ie, debilitating sanctions) wouldn’t have been effective against the former Soviet Union. Instead, the Cold War (where outright war between the two major powers was avoided due to fear of nuclear annihilation) was fought via proxy battles in other countries.

Putin is obviously attempting to re-establish the Russian empire as the 21st Century’s Great Power by invading Ukraine. But he’s not only having to face fierce resistance from the people of that country, most of the globe is uniting to ensure that Russia will pay an extreme economic price. You can almost feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath his feet.

If Putin is defeated, it will, as Fisher noted, “make war more economically painful for the people starting it and thus less likely to happen.” Those are the stakes, and they couldn’t be any higher.

Oh, and by the way…no one understands the stakes better than President Joe Biden, who has managed this whole thing masterfully. But that’s a topic for another day.

In Crushing Blow, Russia Becomes a Chess Pariah

The International Chess Federation has dropped the hammer on Russia.

Vladimir Putin has almost overnight turned his country into North Korea. Russia is facing sudden and incredible international isolation and financial ruin. There are too many developments to list, but here are some of the most significant blows Russia has suffered since Putin ordered the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Thursday.

On the strictly financial front, the United States has banned all transactions with Russia’s central bank. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) will no longer process most Russian banking transactions. Switzerland has frozen Russian banking assets. These actions have already caused a run on the ruble which is plummeting in value.

Meanwhile, Europe and Canada have closed their air space to Russian aviation, which means incidentally that Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov will not be attending a disarmament conference in Switzerland. It also means wealthy Russians won’t be jetting off for Parisian weekends and that business travel will be greatly complicated.

Then there’s the Sweden and Finland’s sudden interest in joining NATO, even in the face of naked Russian threats, and Germany’s decision to send lethal weapons into a conflict zone, which reverses a self-imposed ban in existence since World War Two.  In addition to this, Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria are transferring some of their fighter jets to the Ukrainian Air Force.

None of this was imaginable a week ago. But Russia was already somewhat of a pariah state. That was in evidence at the recently concluded Winter Olympics where Russian athletes were not allowed to compete under their own flag or play their national anthem thanks to their country’s history of using performance enhancing drugs through a state-sponsored doping program.

Now something similar is happening in Russia’s favorite sport, chess. The International Chess Federation (FIDE– Fédération Internationale des Échecs) consulted with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and decided to bring the hammer down.

Following an extraordinary meeting of the FIDE Council held on Sunday, the International Chess Federation has officially condemned Russia’s invasion in Ukraine and taken a number of measures against Russia and Belarus, including a ban on hosting official events and displaying their flags in FIDE-rated events…

…Following the call from IOC, the FIDE Council decides that no Russian and Belarusian national flag be displayed or anthem be played in all FIDE-rated international chess events. Instead—the national chess federation’s flag or the official symbol/logo shall be used.

The 2022 Chess Olympiad will not be held in Moscow as planned, and Russian sponsorship of chess will be banned.

“In order to safeguard FIDE from reputational, financial, and any other possible risks, FIDE terminates all existing sponsorship agreements with any Belarusian and Russian sanctioned and/or state-controlled companies and will not enter into new sponsorship agreements with any such companies.”

This would suggest the discontinuation of working together with companies such as the gas supplier Gazprom, the fertilizer giant PhosAgro, and the mining firm Nornickel.

This is an enormous ego blow to Russia, and it’s uncertain how it can be reversed. Certainly, the chess world won’t relent even in the face of a cease fire if Russia doesn’t relinquish any territorial gains it makes during its Ukrainian invasion. As Alexey Zakharov wrote for Chess.com last year, “In the last hundred or so years, Russia became almost synonymous with chess. The country in its many incarnations—Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and now “just” Russia—produced more grandmasters and world champions than any other, and its players enriched the ancient game immensely.”

Technically, many of these grandmasters were Soviets or Russian subjects rather than ethnically Russian, including Mikhail Botvinnik, a Jew born in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Nonetheless, Russia takes an enormous interest and tremendous pride in their traditional success in chess. Two of the last three world championship matches pitted Russians against Norwegian champion Magnus Carlsen, although GM Sergey Karjakin, who narrowly lost to Carlsen in 2016 was born in Crimea, and represented Ukraine in the 2004 Chess Olympiad. He now plays for Russia and is probably the most outspoken supporter of Putin in the chess world. He supports the invasion of his former homeland.

You may not be interested in chess, but I mention these developments to highlight just how quickly and broadly Russia has been cast out of the international community. Yes, it certainly matters more to the average Russian that they can’t conduct any international financial transactions and their currency is becoming worthless. And Russians were already outcasts in international sport. But chess is different from bobsledding and ice skating. This strikes right at Russia’s self-image and pride.

The world community’s reaction to the Ukrainian invasion has been so intensely strong that no one would have predicted it, and a lot of the consequences will be lasting under almost any imaginable circumstance.

I worry some that we could be taking Russia’s humiliation a little too far, if only because Putin has nuclear weapons and no foreseeable exit strategy that leaves him in power. But, ultimately, we have to hope that he won’t be inclined or allowed to blow up the world, and instead we’ll have the great advantage of having united against fascism in ways that that will be lasting and beneficial.

Question of the Hour: Has Putin Lost His Mind?

On Sunday, there was both good and bad news about Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Here’s a summary of where things stand on the ground from a Pentagon briefing with reporters:

Russian troops entered Kharkiv overnight, and while they remain about 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the north of downtown Kyiv, reconnaissance elements have been operating in the capital city, the senior defense official said. Some members of those reconnaissance units have been wearing Ukrainian uniforms and have been outed by locals, the official added. It remained the Pentagon’s assessment on Sunday morning that the Russian military still has not seized control of any Ukrainian cities.

The Pentagon believes Russian forces are still about 50 kilometers (31 miles) outside of central Mariupol, an important port city along Ukraine’s southeastern coast. “Mariupol will be defended,” said the senior defense official, who credited Ukraine with mounting a “creative resistance” that was both “heroic” and “inspiring.” But the official cautioned that Russia still has significant “operational advantages” over Ukraine and would probably learn from errors that had slowed Russian forces’ advance in the days ahead.

The Russians have faced logistical challenges in sustaining support for the units operating in Ukraine, the senior defense official noted. The Pentagon has also determined that some, though not the majority, of the more than 320 missile launches Russia has undertaken against Ukraine have suffered failures.

The good news is that both Russia and Ukraine have agreed to send delegations to the border between Ukraine and Belarus for negotiations.

https://twitter.com/alexbward/status/1497929838065238023?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497929838065238023%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F

Here’s the bad news:

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1497922873289326595?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497922873289326595%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F

Let’s first note that, before Putin sent troops to invade Ukraine, a lot of very smart people thought he was bluffing. So it would be a huge mistake to assume that he’s bluffing now. But after decades of nuclear powers recognizing that the use of those weapons could very well mean global annihilation, is the Russian president prepared to take that risk? Frankly, it all comes down to whether or not he’s a madman.

Especially after his deranged speech last Monday, people have been questioning Putin’s mental state. Senator Marco Rubio sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and recently tweeted this:

Michael McFaul, who served as Obama’s ambassador to Russia, tweeted this:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Putin “has gone off the rails” after acting in a calculated manner in years past.

The New York Times reported that people have noticed that Putin “has fundamentally changed amid the pandemic, a shift that may have left him more paranoid, more aggrieved, and more reckless.”  Ryu Spaeth asked the question directly, “Is Putin sane?”

Two years since the onset of COVID, the Russian leader remains severely isolated, interacting with cabinet officials largely via video and keeping trips abroad to a minimum. When he does have to meet people face-to-face in Moscow, whether it’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov or French president Emmanuel Macron, they must first pass through a “disinfection tunnel” and then sit at a social distance of Olympian proportions, at tables so long that they have become a physical manifestation of Putin’s remoteness from the rest of the world.

When Putin made the announcement about putting his nuclear forces on high alert, two of his military leaders joined him. Here’s what the scene looked like:

I’m not going to speculate any further – other than to say that if a madman is in control of a country with a nuclear arsenal, we are all in serious danger.

Hopes for avoiding that nightmare come in two forms. One is the fact that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have been agreed to by both parties. The other is that there have been some tiny cracks in Putin’s support from the Russian oligarchs he has empowered.

With those oligarchs facing the twin threats of massive debilitating sanctions that are likely to tank the Russian economy and a leader who could be insane enough to start a nuclear war, will they actually step up and do something to stop him? Let’s hope so.

Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.863

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Sedona, Arizona scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.


I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.


Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

Several changes have occurred for this weeks cycle. I’ve finished the foliage out in front. Behind, I have repainted the area in front of the buttes. I’ve also added some paint to the far left rear.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.


I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

How Biden Got Inside Putin’s Head

Let’s review for a moment what President Biden’s strategy was in the weeks leading up to Russia’s launch of an unprovoked war against Ukraine. First of all, the White House began receiving intelligence about Putin’s plan back in October.

The White House acknowledged from the start that its campaign to stop Mr. Putin might not actually prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. But at the very least, White House officials say, Mr. Biden exposed Mr. Putin and his true intentions, which helped unite, at least for now, the at-times fractious NATO alliance.

One of the lessons I’ve learned in life is that you set yourself up for failure if you attempt to control something over which you can never have control. Biden recognized, from the start, that he wouldn’t have control over what Putin would eventually do. What he did have control over was how the U.S. would respond.

So the administration made the critical decision to share intelligence with both our allies and the public. That accomplished the twin goals of both combating the kind of disinformation campaign Putin was sure to launch in order to justify an invasion, and exposed his true intentions. As a result, our allies rallied together to respond in unison.

The strategy Biden chose wasn’t without risks. For example, when the intelligence suggested that Putin would invade Ukraine on February 16, it didn’t happen. During her press conference on Wednesday, Jen Psaki gave a plausible explanation for why they were wrong: Putin didn’t expect the U.S. to have the level of information they have and didn’t expect them to put that information out. In response, Putin has been adapting and improvising his strategy in Ukraine.

That leads me to step back for a moment and speculate about what it’s like for a former KGB officer to have U.S. intelligence gathering such accurate information about his plans and basically use it against him in such an unprecedented and public way.

Most tyrants who have been in power for a long time develop a strong streak of paranoia. They also don’t have experience with having their plans and intentions thwarted. Putin is obviously no exception. So we can only imagine how angry and terrified he has become as the U.S. (and our allies) obviously have access to his inner circle.

Can you imagine the time and energy Putin must be putting into trying to determine who is betraying him? Paranoia is corrosive, not only to an individual leader, but to the cohesion of those surrounding him. Everyone becomes a suspect. It could be that the hissy fit of rage we witnessed during Putin’s speech on Monday was triggered, at least in part, by paranoia.

Of course, there are risks associated with triggering that kind of rage from a brutal dictator. But from Biden’s perspective, they already knew that Putin had decided to invade Ukraine and calculated that they probably couldn’t stop that from happening. What they could do was expose his true intentions and force him to make adjustments to his plan – possibly leading to mistakes.

No strategy in a situation like this is ever guaranteed to be successful and the one Biden chose is unprecedented, so there was no road map to follow. It is way too soon to judge whether the president chose the right path. All we can say for now is that he got inside Putin’s head in a way that seems to have caught the Russian president off guard.

Will Russia Lose Without Using Nukes?

It’s a dangerous thing when a nuclear power is losing a conventional war.

The United States came fairly close to using nuclear weapons in the Korean War. That risk is always present when a nuclear-armed power is losing a conventional war.  The main thing that restrained President Truman was the successful amphibious landing at Inchon, which turned the war in America’s favor.

[In August 1950], again on the president’s orders, the Strategic Air Command sent 10 atomic-capable B-29s, also carrying assembled bombs without their plutonium cores, to Guam. They were soon augmented by 10 more bombers. For the first time since 1945, atomic bombs, complete but for the nuclear cores, were transferred to military custody. All that was needed was someone to light a match.

Then everything changed.

On September 15, U.N. forces, spearheaded by U.S. Marines, carried out an amphibious landing at Inchon, about 20 miles west of Seoul. MacArthur had long argued for this counter-strike, but the tactic had been vetoed as too risky.

The Inchon landing turned out to be a brilliant flanking attack. U.N. forces quickly retook Seoul and severed the North Koreans’ supply lines. Walton Walker’s Eighth Army broke out of the Pusan Perimeter and formed up with other allied units. By early October, American forces had pushed across the 38th parallel and taken the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. Before October was out, U.N. forces had advanced to the Yalu River. The war, most observers believed, would be won by Christmas.

Of course, the war then turned back in the communists’ favor when China invaded from the north. They hadn’t been dissuaded by the nuclear threat in Guam, but Truman hoped making the threat more explicit might help.

With the Chinese intervention, the United States confronted a hard truth: Threatening a nuclear attack would not be enough to win the war. It was as if the Chinese hadn’t noticed—or, worse, weren’t impressed by—the atomic-capable B-29s waiting at Guam.

President Truman raised the ante. At a November press conference, he told reporters he would take whatever steps were necessary to win in Korea, including the use of nuclear weapons. Those weapons, he added, would be controlled by military commanders in the field.

He also made sure using nukes was a real option.

In April of the next year, Truman put the finishing touches on Korea’s nuclear war. He allowed nine nuclear bombs with fissile cores to be transferred into Air Force custody and transported to Okinawa. Truman also authorized another deployment of atomic-capable B-29s to Okinawa. Strategic Air Command set up a command-and-control team in Tokyo.

This spate of atomic diplomacy coincided with the end of the role played by Douglas MacArthur. After MacArthur had publicly and repeatedly differed with the president over military strategy in Korea, Truman replaced him with General Matthew Ridgway, who was given “qualified authority” to use the bombs if he felt he had to.

A variety of factors prevented the use of nuclear weapons. For one thing, we didn’t have that many of them and there were doubts about their effectiveness against waves of infantry in a mountainous region.  There was also world opinion to consider, and the defense of South Korea was a United Nations mission.

When America discovered it could not win the Vietnam War or end it on acceptable terms, the idea of using nuclear weapons was considered again. But by that time, there were several nuclear powers and the weapons were far more powerful. It was understood that a nuclear confrontation could end life on earth, and the taboo against limited use held. America accepted defeat without using nukes, and did so again in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union also accepted defeat in Afghanistan without using nuclear weapons, but it’s quite possible that losing in Ukraine just isn’t an option for Vladimir Putin. He won’t lose overnight, of course. But he may discover that he can’t end the war on acceptable terms.

It seems impossible that he could stay in power without achieving his objectives in Ukraine. In fact, his biggest threat is the Russian people who may turn against him. Discontent within his military can take two forms, one of which is insisting on using nukes and the other is removing Putin in a coup.

The problem here is obvious. The worse things go for Russia, the more likely it is they use nukes. Yet, if Putin easily wins and crushes all resistance in Ukraine, he will set his sights next on NATO members like the Baltic states.

Now, to be sure, Putin wouldn’t drop a hydrogen bomb on Ukraine because Russia would get the fallout.  But he might use smaller tactical nuclear weapons to subdue urban populations.

The more I think about these things, the angrier I get with Putin for starting this fight. He’s an absolute monster.

Why Republicans Admire Putin

On the surface, it is clear that right wingers are split over how to react to the fact that Vladimir Putin has chosen to declare war on Ukraine. Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the rest of the MAGA crowd are openly siding with Putin, while the more traditional war hawks, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, are condemning the Russian president, comparing him to Adolph Hitler.

There are, however, some disturbing things that unite both sides. At this critical moment, they are joined in blaming President Biden for the actions of Putin. For example, House Republican leadership issued a statement stating that “Sadly, President Biden consistently chose appeasement and his tough talk on Russia was never followed by strong action.” During an unhinged rant with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump pretty much echoed those remarks.

But there is something deeper that unites the two Republican factions. Trump and Carlson openly praise the Russian tyrant. That side has always made it clear that they prefer strong-arm dictators to democracy. But when House Republicans suggest that Biden never followed his “tough talk” with “strong action,” it’s worth taking a minute to unpack what they mean.

While the president was working tirelessly to unite our allies in response to Russian aggression, Republican hawks were pushing for him to act both preemptively and unilaterally. For example, Graham was pushing for U.S. sanctions before Russia invaded Ukraine – while diplomatic efforts were still underway.

Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill that would have had the U.S. preemptively sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, ignoring the fact that it was being developed via an agreement between Russia and Germany. As one of our critical allies, the Biden administration fought those efforts, knowing it was important to partner with Germany and let them make the call. In the end, the Germans halted the launch of the pipeline themselves.

So while these war hawks denounce Putin, they mirror his attachment to a 19th Century Great Powers approach to foreign policy. They have no interest in working with our allies, but see the U.S. as the “exceptional country” that unilaterally dictates what will happen on a global scale. Putin sees Russia in much the same way.

The fact is that, going back to the days when Ronald Reagan declared that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire,” Republicans have actually admired Russian leaders. Here’s something Jonathan Chait wrote about that back in 2014:

Three decades ago, right-wing French intellectual Jean-François Revel published a call to arms entitled “How Democracies Perish,” which quickly became a key text of the neoconservative movement and an ideological blueprint for the Reagan administration. Revel argued that the Soviet Union’s brutality and immunity from internal criticism gave it an inherent advantage over the democratic West — the United States and Europe were too liberal, too open, too humane, too soft to defeat the resolute men of the Iron Curtain.

“Unlike the Western leadership, which is tormented by remorse and a sense of guilt,” wrote Revel, “Soviet leaders’ consciences are perfectly clear, which allows them to use brute force with utter serenity both to preserve their power at home and to extend it abroad.” Even though Revel’s prediction that the Soviet Union would outlast the West was falsified within a few years, conservatives continue to tout its wisdom.

If you’re like me, Revel’s assessment that the U.S. and Europe were “too liberal, too open, too humane, too soft to defeat resolute men,” sounds pretty familiar. It’s the kind of thing we often hear about Democrats these days. Too few people on the left have come up with an adequate response to that kind of criticism.

It all comes down to two different views about how to wield power: dominance or partnership. What Republicans share with Putin is a belief in the idea that dominance is the only means to power. That leads them to embrace a Great Power view of foreign policy. During his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in 2009, President Obama offered an alternative.

Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.

And this is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes — and, yes, religions — subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; our progress must be shared.

To get an idea of how partnership can work, one only needs to compare the failure of our unilateral sanctions against Cuba to how the global sanctions the Obama administration negotiated against Iran were effective in bringing that country to the bargaining table. Another example of partnership would be the global reaction to apartheid in South Africa.

We’re already hearing a bit about how Russia’s decision to declare war on Ukraine will impact the entire globe. The U.S. has a choice about whether to unilaterally attempt to dominate Putin (something that probably isn’t on the table due to the risk of nuclear annihilation) or to explore the power of partnership by working with our allies to contain, and eventually stop him. The latter certainly doesn’t guarantee success, but it sure beats the hell out of the alternative.

How Christian Nationalist are Abusing the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court announced that it will take up the case of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. The plaintiff in this case is web designer Lorie Smith, who owns 303 Creative and asserts that she wants to expand her business to include wedding websites. Because she opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds, Smith does not want to design websites for same-sex weddings, but a Colorado law prohibits businesses that are open to the public from discriminating against gay people.

At issue in this case is the First Amendment, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You might think that Smith and her lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom would be basing their case on the free exercise clause (“Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise” of religion). But that’s not the case. Their claim is that the Colorado law “censors and coerces the speech of creative professionals whose religious beliefs do not conform to state orthodoxy.” In other words, they are equating our guarantee of freedom of speech with the ability of Christians to discriminate based on their religious beliefs.

There is a lot of complex case law involved in this one, which you can read more about from people like Ian Millhiser and Mark Joseph Stern. But I’d like to focus on some of the history that has led Christian nationalists to shift their legal claims away from the free exercise clause in favor of the free speech clause.

Perhaps the most damning blow to the free exercise clause came from none other than former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In 1990 he wrote the majority opinion in the case of Employment Division v. Smith. That was a case filed on behalf of two Native American men who were fired for smoking peyote as part of religious ceremonies at the Native American Church.

The Court held that the First Amendment’s protection of the “free exercise” of religion does not allow a person to use a religious motivation as a reason not to obey such generally applicable laws. Scalia wrote: “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.” That made it very difficult for Christian nationalists to use the free exercise clause to justify their attempts to skirt generally applicable laws, like the ones that prohibit discrimination.

As Katherine Stewart documented in her book, “The Power Worshippers,” it was lawyers like Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), who “asserted that religion is just speech from a certain, religious point of view. And to prohibit speech of any type on the basis of viewpoint is, by definition, to violate the free speech clause.”

Stewart writes about the absurdity of those claims.

One could spill a lot of ink explaining why it is absurd to suppose that religion is no religion after all, but just speech from a religious point of view. But fine arguments are not necessary in this case because the Constitution itself supposes that religion is a category of activity distinct from speech. Why else would the First Amendment take the trouble to guarantee the freedom of religion and then turn around and add a separate and distinct guarantee of the freedom of speech? Indeed, the obvious fact that religion is a distinct activity is essential to make sense of the Establishment Clause.

Another issue at play is the fact that, for Christian nationalists, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment is inextricably tied to the establishment clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”). Since they are the ones intent on claiming that the United States is a Christian nation, they really don’t like that part of our Constitution, which is why they spend so much time denying or trying to explain away Thomas Jefferson’s statement about the First Amendment constructing a wall of separation between church and state.

So freedom of speech is the lever these folks have become intent on using to codify the U.S. as a Christian nation. Over the years, they’ve been successful in using it to defend their claims of “religious liberty.” For example in Windmar vs. Vincent (1981), the Supreme Court ruled that when the U.S. government provides an “open forum,” it may not discriminate against speech that takes place within that forum on the basis of the viewpoint it expresses—in this case, against religious speech engaged in by an evangelical Christian organization.

In the 2001 case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School, the court ruled that teaching religion in an after-school program was protected speech. The plaintiffs in that case wanted to set up an after-school program called the Good News Club, which is sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF).

In the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, “as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint.” That is belied by the group’s vision statement, which states that “Our special mission in CEF is to evangelize every child.” Their aim is to proselytize, which is why they want to be in schools instead of just churches.

Other cases that Alliance Defending Freedom advertises on its web site as “free speech” issues include:

1. Right to Life of Central California v. Bonta, which challenged a California law creating a 30-foot buffer of people from “obstructing, injuring, harassing, intimidating, or interfering with” others going inside vaccination sites.

2. Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center of Southeastern Connecticut v. Tong, which challenges a Connecticut law stating that “no limited services pregnancy center, with the intent to perform a pregnancy-related service, shall make or disseminate … any statement concerning any pregnancy-related service or the provision of any pregnancy-related service that is deceptive, whether by statement or omission.”

3. Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corporation, in which a teacher is suing a school district for firing him because of his refusal to abide by school policy requiring teachers to call students by their preferred gender pronouns and names.

In other words, the lawyers at ADF are defining “free speech” to include the ability to harass, lie, and refuse to treat students with a modicum of respect…all in the name of “religious liberty.”

I suspect that when the Supreme Court rules in favor of Lorie Smith, they’ll add “the ability to discriminate” to that list of “free speech” rights.

Unlikely Allies: Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham

One thinks Putin is the second coming of Hitler and the other says Putin is smart, savvy and charming.

The Daily Beast reports that at least since late in 2021, Donald Trump has been asking associates if they think Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina could potentially oust Mitch McConnell as Senate Minority Leader. This makes a lot of sense because Graham has been a steadfast Trump loyalist while McConnell openly disdains the disgraced ex-president.

But the alliance between Trump and Graham is unnatural, and the crisis in Ukraine really exposes the rift between them. After listening to Vladimir Putin’s demented and lengthy rant on Monday explaining why he’s sending more troops into Ukraine, Graham said “it was exactly what Hitler did in the 1930’s” and demanded “the most crushing sanctions possible on the Russian economy.”

Trump didn’t respond to Putin’s speech until Tuesday but when he did, he had a diametrically different take.

“Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. ‘I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. … We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”

Trump went on to rhapsodize about his relationship with Putin — “He liked me. I liked him.” — and to praise him as someone with a lot of “charm and a lot of pride” who “loves his country.”

Graham compares Putin to Hitler and Trump says Putin has made a savvy and wonderful move, and that he likes him and thinks he’s smart and charming. These are not remotely compatible worldviews.

I’m quite certain that Graham is aware of this and that it troubles him, although he seems to have an infinite resolve to stay on Trump’s good side. On the other hand, I don’t think Trump sees the disparity in their views as significant. Graham is loyal and McConnell is not, and that matters to Trump. Putin is friendly to Trump, and the Ukrainians resisted him and get him impeached. He doesn’t like Ukraine, and if Graham has a soft spot for them it doesn’t really concern him. The important thing is what Graham can do for him and his political and legal fortunes.

It doesn’t occur to Trump that Graham might not be an ideal Senate leader in a hypothetical second term in the presidency, precisely because they don’t have compatible views on Russia. As for Graham, he’s just looking to survive another day. He’ll deal with the insanity of a second Trump presidency if and when it happens, but he won’t put himself at risk by doing anything to prevent it.

It would be hard to draw up two more despicable characters. They deserve each other, but the rest of us need to be rid of both of them.