Virgil - Page 2

In rhetoric, there’s an ancient concept called “argument from authority.” In Latin, it’s called argumentum ad verecundiam. The idea is that the person making an argument invokes a big name, saying, in effect, “So-and-so agrees with me, so I must be right!”

Our 26th president had the same can-do spirit as does the soon-to-be 45th president. Trump has been so eager to dive into the fray that he is already fighting for American jobs.

Even though his inauguration is nearly eight weeks away, we are learning more about how Donald Trump will lead and govern as our 45th president. Specifically, we can identify a quintet of key characteristics.

In earlier installments, we examined the 2016 elections and their impact on the Democrats. We have also pondered the likely contours of the 2018 midterm elections and how Republicans might think about solidifying their Congressional majority. Now, we will look through the prism of history at the 2020 presidential election by studying Richard Nixon’s presidency.

In Part One of our series, we considered the curious partisan political inversion around the proposed AT&T-Time Warner deal, as Donald Trump has come out noisily in opposition, while Hillary Clinton seems quietly supportive. In Part Two, we introduced our guest-expert, the Great Trustbuster himself, Theodore Roosevelt, who explained that the history of the Republican Party’s antitrust policy is more complex than most people realize. Now, in Part Three, we will press Roosevelt for a specific opinion on the AT&T-Time Warner deal, and he will expand on his quantity-vs.-quality theory of regulation.

Two big corporations, AT&T (worth $221 billion at last count) and Time Warner (worth $66 billon), want to combine to become even bigger, and yet in response, the two major American political parties are not to be found in their usual ideological positions.

So Uncle Sam has crushed the Oregon ranchers. Federal forces, spearheaded by the FBI, have done their job, and the rule of law has been upheld. But what law? And whose law? We’ll get to those questions in a moment. But first we can note that one man, one of the ranchers, is dead—and some will say he is a martyr.